


Patchwork

by theramblinrose



Category: The Walking Dead (TV), The X-Files
Genre: Caryl, F/M, MSR, Mandrea, but you could always google, knowledge of neither show is necessary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 09:49:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 57,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24847834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theramblinrose/pseuds/theramblinrose
Summary: MSR. Caryl. Mandrea.  When Scully and Mulder are called to respond to a murder with an unbelievable twist, they encounter the Dixon brothers and their two lady neighbors—all of which may be tied to the murder.  The crime soon becomes the least of anyone’s worries, however, as the group is quickly thrust into a situation where they’ll need to find a way to all come together in order to survive.
Relationships: Andrea/Merle Dixon, Daryl Dixon/Carol Peletier, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully, Merle Dixon/Andrea Harrison
Comments: 61
Kudos: 134





	1. Chapter 1

AN: Hi there! This was actually requested, and I’ve been thinking about it since then. I’m excited with this!

I should begin by saying that knowledge of The X-Files and The Walking Dead might help with this story, but neither is absolutely necessary. You might want to google to see what some characters look like, but I’m going to do my best to explain everything that you need to know as we go along. It should also be said that I’m not really following canon here (for either show) so there’s no need to have that information.

For my MSR people, this is early MSR. 

For my Caryl people, this is early, too. (Same for Mandrea peeps.)

This is going to be slow burn (or as slow as I ever am) on all fronts. 

We’re set somewhere around the year 2012 to start, but you can consider my time a little purposefully fuzzy. It won’t matter much, anyway, honestly.

I own nothing from either show, and this is simply for entertainment. 

I hope that you enjoy! Please let me know what you think! 

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Special Agent Dana Scully had only been back to work a short period of time following a kidnapping and disappearance that, thanks to a wicked case of amnesia caused by brain trauma that had nearly cost her life, she could barely remember. Some people may have called the recovery from that ordeal a vacation— especially since it meant that she was out of work for such an extended time and had been ordered to fill her recovery time with little more than relaxation and the physical exercises necessary to return her body to its previous level of physical fitness—but Scully didn’t count such an ordeal as a vacation. 

There were times when Scully thought it might be nice to take an actual vacation, though.

Many of those times came about when her partner, Special Agent Fox Mulder, was so very exuberant about some new case that, more than likely, was going to drag them on a sort of wild goose chase—especially when that chase started before five in the morning. 

“I would’ve come up,” Mulder said, coming around the car only a moment after he’d dropped it into park. “You didn’t have to wait on the sidewalk.” 

“You told me we had to leave immediately,” Scully said. “I assumed it was pretty urgent when you woke me up at this hour. What’s going on, Mulder?” 

“Get in. I’ll explain in the car,” Mulder said, grabbing Scully’s bag and making quick work of stuffing it into the trunk. He may be trying to act a little nonchalant, but Scully could practically smell equal parts happy excitement and anxiety on him. No matter how good Mulder believed he was at hiding his feelings, sometimes, Scully could usually read him like a book.

“Are we going to the airport?” Scully asked as soon as she was buckled into her seat and Mulder was already maneuvering the vehicle.

“Georgia,” Mulder said. “A little town just outside Atlanta. I’m afraid we’re driving, though. This coffee’s for you.” 

“Driving?” Scully asked. “That’s like…”

“Ten hours, at least. We’ll make it by four if the traffic’s on our side. Haven’t you been watching the news?” Mulder asked.

“Not since last night,” Scully said. She looked around, inside the car, trying to locate the files that she knew were tucked somewhere.

“A lot happens in a few hours, Scully,” Mulder said. “Especially these days.” 

“You can say that again,” Scully breathed out, the words barely coming out loud enough for Mulder to hear if he’d been trying to listen. “What did I miss?” 

“Atlanta airports are shut down,” Mulder said. “Officially and indefinitely. So are all major airports, actually.” 

“The virus?” Scully asked. Mulder hummed in the affirmative.

The virus. That’s what they were calling it because, at this moment, they didn’t have enough information to give it an official name and what little they did know, they didn’t want to share with the world. 

As FBI agents, Scully and Mulder’s knowledge of what was going on—what was really going on—was almost as limited as what every other person got from the news. They knew only enough, essentially, to know that they hardly knew anything at all.

“It’s spreading,” Mulder said. “They think shutting down major airports is the best move, though. Nothing and nobody coming in or going out.” 

“No quarantines? No lockdowns?” Scully asked. She’d been following things for a while, as had most of the world, but she’d shut off her television to sleep. She was only awake at this hour because Mulder had woken her up when he’d called to say that they’d been assigned a case and were asked to start work immediately. Scully was supposed to have the day off. Instead, she’d thrown what she needed for a week—because Mulder hadn’t really given her a timeline—into her bag, and she’d waited for him to show up.

“Nothing like that’s changed yet,” Mulder said. “But they’re starting to take channels off the air to replace them with emergency information. They’re telling everyone not to panic.” 

Scully sighed. As an illustration of the thought that darted through her mind, some idiot driving way too fast cut Mulder off, and Mulder blew the horn as he slammed on the brakes to avoid a collision.

“You OK, Scully?” Mulder asked quickly.

“I’m fine,” Scully assured him, quickly.

Mulder sighed.

“Telling everyone not to panic only causes people to panic,” Mulder said, clearly hearing Scully’s thoughts as well as she sometimes felt that she could hear his.

“So, what are we doing?” Scully asked.

Mulder reached his arm back, produced the files from somewhere behind Scully’s seat, and dropped two of them into her lap.

“What’s this?” She asked.

“Open the top one,” Mulder said. “I can talk you through it while I drive. Murder case. That charming gentleman that you see pictured there was Edward James Peletier Jr.—known to everyone as Ed— of Hickory, Georgia.”

Scully frowned at the picture.

“Shotgun?” 

“Complete with scattershot,” Mulder said. He laughed to himself. “Doesn’t paint a pretty picture, does it?” 

“Suspects?” 

“There,” Mulder said, gesturing to another page and some additional photos. “There’s where some of the complication comes in. Four individuals are possible suspects at the moment. Two brothers—Daryl and Merle Dixon. Two women, unrelated. Andrea Harrison and Carol Peletier.”

“Peletier, like the victim?” 

“The victim’s ex-wife,” Mulder said. “The divorce wasn’t final, but it is now. Ed had a history of domestic abuse against Carol Peletier and, recently, there were allegations of misconduct toward their ten year old daughter. The victim was killed outside of the house—or, rather, the trailer—where Andrea Harrison lives with Carol Peletier and her daughter.” 

“So—Carol Peletier killed her husband. Her ex-husband. Because of a history of abuse.” Scully said, testing out her first theory. “He came to the house to pay his soon-to-be-ex-wife a visit, she felt threatened, and she shot him. Mulder—I don’t see why local authorities couldn’t handle this. Why are we driving to Georgia in the middle of a viral outbreak?” 

“Because it’s not as simple as all that,” Mulder said. “It was Daryl Dixon that pulled the trigger and rid Ed of his head. You see, the yard to the trailer where Andrea Harrison and Carol Peletier live is also the yard to the trailer where the Dixon brothers reside. Ed Peletier was killed in the yard between the two structures. You can see the photos of the crime scene there. Unfortunately, it’s all been cleaned up already, but it’s still going to be our very first stop.”

“Were they having an affair?” Scully asked, considering the new information.

“Not that anybody knows about,” Mulder said. “Of course, anything’s possible, Scully.” 

He smirked at her. 

“I still don’t understand what this has to do with us, Mulder,” Scully said. “So—what was his name? Dixon?” 

“Daryl Dixon,” Mulder said. “He’s the one that pulled the trigger.” 

“So—Daryl Dixon and Carol Peletier are having an affair—maybe even before she seeks the divorce. Ed comes to pay a visit and Daryl Dixon kills him—either to protect Carol or, maybe, to simply be rid of him.” 

“Open and shut,” Mulder said. His tone of voice and the amused smirk on his lips told Scully that it was anything but open and shut.

“What is it, Mulder?” Scully asked. Something like a chill ran up her spine, but she suppressed her body’s reaction to the sensation. “What does this have to do with us? It’s not an X-File.”

“How much have you been following the information about this virus from a medical standpoint?” Mulder asked.

Scully shrugged her shoulders.

“A little,” she said. “There’s really nothing being released. I’d love to get the opportunity to stand in on an autopsy, but…”

“What do you know?” Mulder asked.

Scully hummed to herself and scanned her memory for any bits and pieces she could recall gathering since the whole thing had started—very slowly at first—and had begun to spread.

“It’s attacking the brain,” Scully said. “Maybe causing strokes. There have been reports of violent behavior. Erratic behavior. Uncharacteristic, in most cases. They haven’t identified an at-risk group, yet. The cases have been too erratic.” 

“The reason they’ve called us in is because Daryl Dixon is claiming that he shot Ed in self-defense,” Mulder said. “And every one of the other suspects—seemingly with no more reason for the four of them to be involved than their status as neighbors—is corroborating his story.”

“That’s not too unusual,” Scully said. “Was Ed armed?” 

“No,” Mulder said. “However, at the moment, they can’t hold Dixon for anything.” 

“Except killing Ed—an unarmed man—in self-defense.”

“Not even that,” Mulder said. He smiled to himself. There was clearly some piece to this puzzle that he was still holding onto, and he was anticipating that he was going to enjoy Scully’s reaction. “According to Mr. Dixon’s story he didn’t kill Ed.”

“Mulder—he has no head,” Scully said with some exasperation, looking back at the crime photo. “And you said that it was Daryl Dixon that pulled the trigger.” 

“He admits to that,” Mulder said.

“Then it’s cut and dry,” Scully said. 

“Not exactly. According to Mr. Dixon’s story—and supported by their autopsy results—Daryl Dixon didn’t kill Ed Peletier. He couldn’t.” 

“I don’t understand,” Scully said.

“According to the four accounts that were given, and the autopsy results, Scully, when Ed Peletier attacked Daryl Dixon, he was already dead.” 

Scully’s stomach lurched and rolled.

“Dead?” She asked, suddenly getting the feeling she’d tumbled down some kind of proverbial rabbit hole—and having no idea how far she still had to fall.

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“That’s the last of the campin’ supplies, Merle,” Daryl said, shoving the tied-up tent pieces into the small trailer that was attached to the back of his truck.

“Can we just talk about this for a minute?” Andrea asked. She was hovering just inches away from panic. Daryl could hear it in her voice. 

“The hell is there to talk about, Sugar Tits?” Merle asked. Daryl saw the blonde woman curl her lip at Merle. 

They were neighbors, and they had been for nearly a year. They were, sometimes, “borrow a cup of sugar” type neighbors. They were occasionally “I made too much, do you like meatloaf” type neighbors. They were absolutely “I can jump your car off” type neighbors. And, very recently, it seemed they’d become something entirely different. They’d become “I killed your dead and very angry ex-husband” neighbors and, almost immediately after, they’d become “we’ve killed our dead and oddly violent neighbors from down the road” neighbors.

That didn’t mean, however, that they were all extremely comfortable with one another, or that Merle never rubbed Andrea and her roommate, Carol, wrong. In all fairness, though, Merle rubbed most people wrong from time to time.

“Maybe we should call the police,” Andrea said.

“And tell ‘em what, exactly?” Merle asked. “We know you was just the fuck out here for us killin’ that lil’ mousy woman’s husband—despite the fact he was already dead an’ shit—but we just thought you oughta know that two more fuckin’ corpses just sauntered into our fuckin’ front yard an’ tried to make a grab for the kid so we killed them, too.” 

“They didn’t arrest Daryl,” Andrea said, “because they could tell that Ed was dead at the time of the shooting.” 

“You’re a fuckin’ moron if you think that shit ain’t temporary,” Merle said. “They ain’t arrested him ‘cause they don’t know what the hell is goin’ on. It’s all over the damned news. Nobody knows what the hell is goin’ on. This damn virus or—whatever the hell this shit is—has the whole world turned fuckin’ upside down. There’s fires an’ people losin’ their damned minds an’ they got side-tracked, but that ain’t gonna last forever. They comin’ back. You can count on that. And when they find them other bodies, they gonna take you an’ me down, too, since you was the one that helped wrestle that meth head down for me to hit her with the shovel.” 

“So, we’re just going to—run?” Andrea asked.

The question was almost hypothetical. Daryl and Merle had nearly finished packing the truck bed and the trailer. Merle had already packed his saddlebags. Across the yard, Carol Peletier had been steadily packing food, suitcases, and other items into the car that she and Andrea were sharing since Andrea’s little Pinto had given up on trying to hold onto what little bit of life it had left.

It had been a snap decision, and they really didn’t know what they were going to do, but they knew they couldn’t stay here. There was too much going on. There had already been three violent corpses—how many more would show up? None of them, except maybe Andrea, trusted the police to do anything to protect them and, worse, they were now on a list of suspects and, possibly, even of most-wanted. If they weren’t, they would be when the bodies were uncovered, and they weren’t well-hidden at the moment. 

Beyond that, there was something rotten in the state of Georgia—and possibly the whole world. Daryl wasn’t sure that there was anyone they could trust right now.

“Look—you go with us or you stay,” Daryl said, checking his voice to keep it calm. Andrea was near panic, and that was only reasonable, really. She’d do better with him than she would with Merle at the moment. “Either way—you better tell Carol what the hell you’re doin’ ‘cause she’s done packed your shit and, if you ain’t goin’, we can put somethin’ else in that space.” 

“No—it’s just…do we even know what we’re doing? Where we’re going? We’re just—running?” 

“We’ll figure it out,” Merle said. “Don’t’cha worry, Princess. At this point? If everything we’ve seen on the news, and all the shit you can bet we ain’t seen is true, and takin’ into consideration what the hell’s happened here already? You’re safer wherever the hell we end up than you would be sleepin’ in your own damn bed.” He winked at her. “You stick with me. I’ll take care of you—take care of you real damn good, Sugar.” 

“Merle,” Daryl called out, warning his brother off of pursuing the woman too hard—especially with their current situation and her level of anxiety. She’d already hit one person—or corpse, rather—over the head with a shovel in a state of sheer panic.

Carol came out the door of her trailer, carrying something else to go in her car.

“Did you think of anything else?” She called out. She’d been taking directions, rather happily, from Merle since he’d suggested that the best thing they could do was move and move fast. She was terrified for her daughter, and Merle promised that getting the hell out of Dodge would help protect all of them. 

“Just wrap it up!” Merle said. “Brother—you too. Take a last look around, if you want. Make sure we ain’t missed nothin’ too damned important. But it’s gettin’ on toward five an’ I don’t want our asses out in the dark with no idea of where we restin’ our heads tonight.” 

“Got it,” Daryl said. 

He mounted the porch steps and checked the inside of the trailer quickly. Neither he nor Merle had hardly ever had much more than a pot to piss in, so there wasn’t too much that he needed to check, but he did a last minute grab for the money that he had squirreled away, and he checked to make sure that they hadn’t forgotten any of the guns that they stashed throughout the trailer. 

There was no need to have a long moment of looking around, memorizing the place for nostalgia or anything of the like. The trailer had been a roof over their heads, but it had been little more than that. Daryl didn’t even bother looking for the key to lock the door. If anybody wanted the couch they got off the side of the road, their collection of yard sale furniture, or the television with the busted color rods, they were welcome to all of it. 

Stepping back onto the porch, though, he froze almost instantly at what he saw.

And then, figuring he could maybe deescalate the problem—but not forgetting the gun concealed beneath the back of his shirt—he stepped down the porch slowly, hands raised, and addressed everyone outside.

“Afternoon,” he said. “Can we do somethin’ for you?” 

He hoped, if he was nonchalant about it, neither Merle nor the two obvious cop-types—all with their weapons raised and pointed at each other—would feel the need to pull a trigger. 

After all, killing the already-dead was one thing. Killing the living was something else entirely.

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AN: I hope you like the setup, so far, for this story. I’m excited about all the possibility! 

Please let me know what you think!


	2. Chapter 2

AN: Here we are, another chapter here! 

I’m glad that some of you are excited about this story. I appreciate you letting me know that! I think it’s going to be a lot of fun, especially since I’m just really not tied to any kind of canon with this one. 

I do hope you enjoy! Please let me know what you think! 

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“Good afternoon,” the man pointing a gun at Daryl’s brother responded. “I presume you’re the youngest Dixon—so that would make you Daryl?” 

“That depends on who’s askin’,” Daryl offered.

“Special Agent Fox Mulder,” Mulder said. “FBI. This is Special Agent Dana Scully. We just want to ask you and your—companions—a few questions.” 

“You crazy as shit if you think we’re goin’ to jail with what the hell’s been goin’ on here,” Merle growled.

Daryl let his eyes dart over everyone in the front yard so that he could have a good feel for the scene. Carol was on the porch of her trailer, frozen. Her hand was on the glass door, pushing it shut, and the little girl—Sophia—was peeking through the glass. Andrea was standing beside Merle, but she’d squatted down, half-hiding behind the car. She was hiding for good reason. Both Special Agent Fox Mulder and Special Agent Dana Scully had guns pointed across the car in that direction.

Daryl saw that the man’s eyes kept flicking in the direction of the small woman agent, though, and Merle clearly saw the same. The man’s primary interest, in the moment, was protecting the woman—drawing attention away from her so that Merle would fire a shot at him first. Merle saw that, too, and for that reason he kept his gun trained on the woman to keep the man from making a move.

“We already answered every question we know the answer to,” Daryl said, checking his tone carefully and keeping his hands up. “We don’t got any more answers about anything. The police have been over this place with a fine-toothed comb.” It was true. The cops had come to get Ed’s body. They’d taken fingerprints and grass samples and everything else they could think to take. They hadn’t been back since the newest set of corpses had wandered through the yard, though, and they didn’t know that there were two bodies hidden out back—just at the line of the woods—with an old car tarp thrown over them and weighted down with various odds and ends that had been left to rot in the woods. At the end of the day, both Dixons knew there were much better ways to hide a body—they’d watched some crime shows on television, after all, and neither of them were stupid, despite their lack of formal education—but this wasn’t the time to waste time fucking around with corpses. “I’m sorry, Special Agent Fox Mulder, but we just don’t have shit to tell you.” 

“I understand,” the man said. “We don’t have to be so formal. You can call me Mulder. If you’ll just lower your weapons, we can have this conversation in a much calmer manner.” 

“Merle—maybe we oughta do what he says?”

“Sure thing,” Merle said. “Just as soon as they lower theirs, I’ma lower mine.” 

Mulder looked frustrated, but he also looked determined to win this in some way. He moved his hand, taking his finger off the trigger, and showed Merle that he was putting his gun away.

“Good faith,” Mulder said. “Lower your gun.” 

“Just as soon as sweet cheeks, there, lowers hers,” Merle offered.

Daryl saw Special Agent Dana Scully grimace—which was not an unusual expression when it came to dealing with Merle—but she didn’t shoot him on the spot for being an asshole. Daryl assumed that was a good start to things. 

“Scully,” Mulder said quietly, practically nudging the woman with his voice. She looked at him, sighed, and lowered her own weapon. Immediately, Merle made good on his end of the deal and lowered his gun.

Andrea raised up from behind the car, Daryl finished his trip down the porch steps to the front yard, and Carol started down the steps with her daughter—finally free from behind the glass door—just behind her and close enough that she could have walked with her hand in her mother’s back pocket.

“I’m Mulder, and this is Scully,” Mulder said, clearly wanting to make things a little more informal now that they’d put their guns away. “We just came to talk to you about the report that was filed about the incident that took place here with Ed Peletier.”

“I’m Carol,” Carol said, stepping forward. She offered a hand to Scully and Scully accepted it. “This is Sophia. Ed was my husband. My ex-husband.” 

“Would you rather we didn’t talk around Sophia?” Scully asked. She offered Sophia a smile—something that almost seemed out of place with as serious as she’d appeared before, and Sophia smiled back at her.

Carol hugged her daughter against her.

“I’d rather she didn’t leave my sight,” Carol admitted. Daryl understood the woman’s concern. 

“Lotta shit goin’ on these days,” Daryl said from where he was standing. He wanted to relieve Carol of some of the guilt she wore on her face. He supposed she felt guilty for what Sophia had already been exposed to, and maybe she feared these FBI people were judging her, but Daryl didn’t want her thinking that she’d done something wrong. Neither he nor Merle knew much about great mothers, really, but Carol had been the best mother that either of them had ever seen. She was wholly devoted to the well-being of the little girl. “Sophia’s seen enough that I guess there’s nothing she can’t hear. Safer than lettin’ her get too far away with everything goin’ on right now.” 

Sophia had seen Ed. She’d run from him—and not because he was an animated corpse. 

“Your report said that you, Mr. Dixon…”

“Daryl,” Daryl broke in, quickly interrupting Mulder. 

“Daryl—the report said that you pulled the trigger?” 

“I did.” 

“But the report also said that Ed Peletier was deceased at the time that you pulled the trigger,” Mulder said.

“He was,” Andrea said, inserting herself into the conversation. “The police—they verified it. They took him to the coroner. They came and confirmed that he was dead. That’s why they didn’t hold anyone. Something about—the head didn’t bleed like it would have, or something, if he’d been alive.” 

“You said he was dead,” Scully said. “On what evidence, exactly are you basing that conclusion?” 

Daryl laughed to himself. 

“On the fact that he weren’t alive no more,” Daryl said. “Dead. Deceased. A fuckin’ corpse.” 

“Did you—examine Ed Peletier prior to shooting him?” Scully asked.

“Didn’t have to,” Daryl said. “Listen—he come growlin’ into the yard. Come outta the damn woods. His car’s parked down there near the road unless they come to tow it already. This weren’t no friendly call.”

“And you were out in the yard, and you saw him, and…how exactly did you come to kill him?” Scully asked.

“I was out here,” Carol said. “With Sophia. I was reading a book. When I saw Ed, I—didn’t realize he was dead. Not at first. I thought he was drunk. Maybe he’d taken something. He was sort of—staggering. I screamed and ran for Sophia. She was over there. She likes to play in that sandy area over there with—with dishes and her dolls. Like a playhouse, but without the house.” 

“I heard her scream,” Daryl said. “Hell, we all did. We all come out the house.” 

“And you brought the shotgun with you,” Mulder offered.

“Not at first,” Daryl said. “Contrary to what the hell you might believe, we don’t normally greet everybody around here with a gun. At first, I hung my head out the door to see what it was. Coulda been a snake for all the hell I knew. Saw Ed. Andrea come runnin’ outta their house.” 

“I saw that Ed wasn’t—normal. He wasn’t alive. His skin was all—gray. His eyes were really cloudy. As soon as I yelled at him, he stopped following Carol. He came toward me,” Andrea said. She shivered, visibly, with the recollection.

“She screamed he was dead,” Daryl said. “We been watchin’ the news. Seen the latest. Talkin’ about if you see someone that’s got the virus you’re supposed to stay away from them. They say they’ll rip right into you. Tearin’ people’s faces off and shit. They’ll kill you. They go violent.” 

“That’s how you get the virus,” Carol said. “You get bit.” 

“Or scratched,” Merle tossed out. “Let one of them asshole’s break the skin. I reckon it’s like that AIDS or somethin’. Body fluid contact or whatever.” 

“Anyway, they didn’t say on the damn news that they were corpses,” Daryl said. “Already startin’ to rot and shit.” 

“They’re saying a lot more on the news now than they were even ten hours ago,” Mulder said. 

“Look—the fact of the matter is that there aren’t corpses walking around,” Scully offered. “What you saw was possibly a person infected with the virus. And—I haven’t had the chance to examine someone with the virus yet, but it’s possible that they may, in some ways, appear to be deceased. They’re not dead, though. It’s simply not likely that the dead are out—walking around—and trying to attack the living.” 

“Not likely, but still fuckin’ possible,” Merle said. “Listen—as good as this chat is, we gotta cut that shit short. You hear that noise?” 

At Merle’s prompting, everyone clearly strained to listen.

“Airplanes?” Mulder asked. “They closed the major airlines.” 

“Crop dusters, maybe,” Daryl said. “A lot of them operate privately.”

“The government does what the hell it wants,” Merle said. “But I guess you’d know that shit, wouldn’t you?” 

“We might know less than you think we do right now,” Mulder said. Daryl decided he sounded sincere and, perhaps, just a little bit anxious about all the things that none of them probably knew right now. Daryl let his eyes fall on Scully, the petite woman that stood next to him. She was looking at every one of them. She was taking them in. Daryl could practically feel the woman recording every bit of information about him that she thought was even the slightest bit pertinent. “Were you going somewhere?” Mulder asked, gesturing toward the obviously packed truck and trailer.

“Gettin’ the hell outta Dodge,” Merle said. 

“Because of the murder?” Scully asked. Daryl didn’t miss Mulder’s hand go out to touch her arm. He might have thought he’d somewhat concealed the gesture, but he didn’t conceal it well. He was afraid that they’d walked right into a den of murders and that, once they’d pulled the trigger once, they wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger again. He’d really love to know about the bodies under the tarp, and she’d love to know how the corpses had kept coming even after Andrea had stabbed one with a kitchen knife. It hadn’t even slowed the damn thing down. It hadn’t flinched. And that’s when they’d used the shovel because it was the closest thing handy at that moment.

Of course, if they stayed here too long, it was entirely possible that more corpses would show up and they could get firsthand experience with the fact that nothing short of destroying their heads even seemed to slow them down. There were plenty of other people that could make it there, after all. They did have other neighbors, even if they had some distance to travel like the others had. 

The sound of the planes grew louder. 

“I smell smoke,” Andrea offered. The moment she said it, Daryl smelled the smell as well, and he wondered how he’d missed it before.

“Wood,” Daryl said. “Paint.”

“Rubber, too,” Merle said. “Look there.” 

Almost like it had appeared instantly, the sky was filled with thick black smoke. It looked like it was a long way from where they were, but they could already smell it, so it wasn’t too far. 

“That’s our sign,” Merle said. 

“Sign?” Mulder asked. “What’s—going on?” 

“Burnin’,” Merle said. “Whole damn state’s on fire. They tellin’ people to head for Atlanta. Supposed to be some safe houses there or somethin’.”

“Burning?” Scully asked.

“They’re saying it’s comin’ from the weather,” Daryl said. “Hot and dry. Some fires got started and got out of control.” 

“But they full of fuckin’ shit,” Merle said. “There’s a plane. Let’s move—that shit they’re droppin’ is flammable. I’d bet my nuts an’ every body else’s on it, too!” 

Merle didn’t have to work too hard to convince their neighbors. Before he’d finished talking, almost, Carol and Andrea were at their vehicle. Carol got Sophia inside, and then she took her place behind the driver’s seat before the station wagon roared to life. 

Merle ran for his bike—determined never to abandon the thing he’d worked so hard on—and Daryl rushed toward the truck.

“Where are you going?” Mulder asked. 

“Outta here,” Daryl said. 

“That’s not very specific,” Mulder said.

“Don’t got time for specific,” Daryl said. Merle kicked his bike to life and yelled at Daryl to shut up and hurry up. He started down the driveway and Carol followed him without hesitation. One of the planes, overhead, got a little closer—dropping its load of whatever it was carrying. The smoke was growing thicker by the second in the air around them, and Daryl could hear a series of explosions at a distance that told him that a raging fire was burning out of control, swallowing up everything in its path. 

Soon, the bodies under the tarp would be gone entirely.

“Listen, you do whatever the hell you want,” Daryl said. “Come with us if you got nowhere else to be, but I wouldn’t fuck around here too much longer if I were you.” 

Daryl left the two FBI agents staring at each other. He got in the truck and, without wasting another minute, he followed the small caravan that consisted of his brother and neighbors. As they pulled out of the driveway and turned onto the road—headed away from the fire—Daryl saw the car following behind him. They had little choice of direction when they left the driveway. The wall of fire coming for them all was unmistakable. 

Daryl noticed, though, that as the miles ticked on, the car didn’t turn off the path that Merle had chosen to get them all out of town.


	3. Chapter 3

AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

I will let my TWD readers know that we’ll use some elements from the show (obviously), but we’re going really off-grid as far as following canon. Also, it should be noted that Merle, here, is already a recovering addict and is not who we see as first season Merle on the show. I’m taking liberties with the characters of both shows. 

I hope you enjoy! Please let me know what you think! 

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Almost as soon as he’d parked the car a few feet behind Carol’s parked station wagon, Mulder was out of it. 

Everyone came spilling out of their respective vehicles, stretching and obviously trying to get their blood flowing.

The car ride had quickly turned quiet for Mulder and Scully after they’d left the trailers behind. The raging fire that, by now, had probably consumed the small town where they’d been was at least an hour and a half drive away from them now—maybe more, since Mulder hadn’t paid attention to a clock in some time. Their choices of where to go had been limited, and neither Mulder nor Scully knew this area well enough to set out on their own. Their only real choice, for the time being, had been to follow the group.

Immediately, Scully had tried to call Skinner for information—any information—about what was going on. There had been no service. None at all. Scully had explained that away as being a result of the rural area where they were located, and maybe even the fire, but as they’d gotten closer to Atlanta, and then had left it somewhat behind, without ever gaining service, she’d had to accept that there was something else going on—even if they didn’t know what it was.

The radio had offered little assistance or information. Every channel was either off the air or broadcasted the same thing: the repeated announcement that there was a state of emergency and everyone should evacuate to their closest designated safe locations. Then, following the initial announcement, there was a long and detailed list of where people should go to find these safe locations. From what Mulder could tell, it was a nationwide announcement since some of the locations mentioned would be of very little interest to the people of Georgia.

From where Mulder was standing, this virus hit hard, it spread fast, and it was almost entirely unexplained.

Mulder and Scully had known relatively little about the virus when they’d left Washington—they’d probably known much less than some of those with more official channels of information—and they knew even less about it now. They were cut off, just as surely as anyone else. That knowledge created a gnawing in the pit of Mulder’s stomach. Scully hid her emotions pretty well, when she wanted to, but he could see in her eyes that she was uncomfortable with the uncertainty surrounding everything.

Mulder almost felt, in some way, guilty for the information he’d consumed about each of the people they’d met on this murder case—a case that he didn’t imagine mattered very much, now, especially in the face of so many other more serious questions. The information provided to him had broken down each of the people to a few bullet points. Their whole lives had been reduced to a few sentences that someone had decided was pertinent information—and some of it really wasn’t flattering.

Of course, Mulder tried to keep in mind what it might look like, even, if he or Scully were reduced to nothing more than a bullet pointed blurb of what someone considered relevant to know while considering them prime suspects.

Mulder certainly knew what it felt like to be reduced to what others wanted to see you as. 

“Where are we?” Scully asked as she walked around the front of the car and stepped toward Merle.

“Off the beaten path,” Merle offered. “This here’s a campin’ spot me an’ my lil’ brother like to use for huntin’.”

“The announcement that’s running on every radio station says to go straight to Atlanta,” Scully said.

“Then go,” Merle said. “If that’s where you wanna be. Ain’t nobody holdin’ you here, Rusty.” 

Mulder saw the exact moment that Scully got heated. She stepped closer toward Merle.

“My name is Dana Scully,” Scully informed him. “You can call me Scully.” 

He stared at her a second, and then he smiled to himself.

“Named you wrong,” he mused. “Firecracker.” He winked at her. “Lotta bang in a lil’ package.” 

“Scully,” Mulder said, catching her attention. She looked at him and he gently shook his head, hoping to convey to her that they needed to just let some things go—at least long enough to figure out where they were and what was happening. He’d been “Spooky” Mulder long enough to know that a short period of time as “Firecracker” wouldn’t kill anyone. Mulder stepped forward, closing the distance between himself and Merle.

Merle had moved on from the conversation, as had everyone else.

“What do you need us to do?” Carol asked, approaching Merle, her hand on the shoulder of her daughter that hovered close enough to be her shadow.

“Divide it up how the hell you want,” Merle said. “But we’re gonna need a fire. Got shit in the trailer for cookin’ an’ boilin’ water. Gotta have water. Boiled. Purified. Get it outta the quarry. Need food an’ these tents set up or everybody’s sleepin’ in the cars. Dark ain’t gonna wait on us. Need a ditch dug—over there. Edge of camp. Latrine. We’ll take turns keepin’ watch tonight.” 

“Keeping watch for what, exactly?” Mulder asked, feeling that he could break in while the others were starting to drag the contents of the trailer out into the open.

Merle looked temporarily frustrated, but then his expression changed to one of amusement. 

“You know that better’n we do, Mr. Central Intelligence.” 

“That’s the CIA,” Mulder offered.

“What?” 

“CIA,” Mulder said. “That’s the CIA. We’re FBI.”

“Same damn thing,” Merle muttered, dragging some items out of the back of the trailer and carrying them toward a pile. They were tent poles and, as an excuse to stay with the man who was clearly stepping in as something of a leader of this small group, Mulder took hold of the back of the poles to ease Merle’s load and help him move them where he intended the tent or tents to be erected.

“It’s not, actually,” Mulder said. “Not at all.”

“All you government blowhards are behind this shit,” Merle muttered, though not in an entirely unfriendly manner. 

“I take it you don’t trust the government,” Mulder said, lowering his voice a little. The place where Merle wanted to put the tents was some small distance away from where they’d parked the cars and where Carol and her daughter were making some kind of meal out of a cooler they’d pulled from the back of the station wagon. They were some distance away, also, from where Daryl and Andrea were filling containers with water from the nearby rock quarries. 

Still, Merle took them off several more feet, clearly providing the opportunity for them to speak privately. Merle smirked at Mulder when he’d found a spot that he thought was acceptable and turned to face him.

“Not so far as I can throw them,” Merle said. 

Merle Dixon had an impressive rap sheet if one was going by length alone. He’d been in and out of trouble—mostly in—since he’d been big enough for anyone to notice him. Mulder had skimmed through his offenses. None of them were particularly heinous. He mostly stayed in trouble for DUI, possession, and variations of disorderly conduct and assault. His little brother, Daryl, had a much shorter rap sheet, and his mostly included disorderly conduct and assault. Mulder could guess, in the short amount of time that he’d known the Dixon brothers, that Merle probably ended up in frequent scuffles and Daryl was quick to defend his sibling.

There were worse human beings in the world, though. Mulder had seen much more offensive rap sheets.

Merle Dixon had also done a short stint in the military, but he’d been discharged from the United States Marine Corps. His file had listed his crimes as insubordination and assault of an NCO.

Merle Dixon, it seemed, had trouble with authority and a healthy distrust of the government and those in positions of power. 

“You and I have something in common,” Mulder said. 

The corner of Merle’s lip curled upward in amusement. He glanced over his shoulder at the working camp. Scully, always having had a distaste for simply standing around, was helping carry wood that was, presumably, going to be the base of a fire or two once they’d decided where to arrange it.

Merle reached in his pocket, pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He offered Mulder one, but Mulder waved it away.

“Tell me what’cha know, Mr. FBI,” Merle said.

“Mulder, please,” Mulder said. Merle hummed and nodded his head. Mulder thought about arguing for Scully’s rights not to be referred to by any pet names, but he’d let her fight that battle later. “I don’t think we know as much as you think we do. They haven’t told us anything about the virus that hasn’t been on the news for everyone to hear.”

“Didn’t tell you about the corpses, then,” Merle said.

“No,” Mulder said. “Nothing like that. Not being related to the virus. Nothing beyond the fact that people were dying from the virus. That much we knew.”

“Seems like it ain’t the dyin’ from the damn thing that’s so bad,” Merle mused. “Seems like it’s the not stayin’ fuckin’ dead that’s really the problem. The hell you want with me an’ my brother?” 

“I told you,” Mulder said. “We were sent down here to investigate the murder of Ed Peletier.”

“Washington?” Merle asked. Mulder nodded. “Long way to go to find out about the death of a sorry son of a bitch like Ed Peletier. Wouldn’t think he warranted so damn much attention. He sure didn’t get the attention of the authorities the last ten times he’s put his hand on Mouse—and that’s with her livin’ in the trailer across the lot from us—tryin’ her best to outrun his sorry ass.” 

“Mouse?” 

“Little mousy thing, ain’t she?” Merle mused. “Carol. Always busy. Always skittish. Always just tendin’ her pup an’ lookin’ over her shoulder ‘cause ain’t a soul been lookin’ over it for her.” He hummed in the negative. “No—ain’t nobody cared about what the hell Ed Peletier was doin’ the night he kicked the door in. Dragged her out in the yard threatenin’ to choke her out. They only cared about what the hell ole Merle was doin’ when he knocked the asshole out that night—or what Daryl was doin’ when he deprived Ed’s rabid ass corpse of his head and the brain he hadn’t used in more’n forty fuckin’ years.” 

“Didn’t she have a restraining order?” Mulder asked. He already knew the answer to that. Carol’s file had come with a sheet nearly as long as Merle’s rap sheet. The difference was that her list had been incidents where she’d been involved, mostly, as the victim of domestic abuse. 

“Those things are great,” Merle said. “Restrainin’ orders. In fact—we gonna wish we had us a few just as soon as we run outta paper to wipe our nasty asses, Mulder. So—I’ma ask you again. Why the hell you come all the way from Washington to worry about Ed Peletier?” 

Mulder considered it a moment. There was no reason to lie, honestly. What they needed here was the truth, not secrets among the few of them that, for the time being, were stuck together.

“Scully and I work with the X Files. We work with cases that involve paranormal and supernatural occurrences. As soon as you reported that Ed Peletier was deceased at the time of his attack on Carol Peletier, and the autopsy results suggested that was true, the case became something of interest for us.” 

“So, you believe he was dead already,” Merle said, neither asking a question nor fully making a statement with his tone.

“I have no reason not to believe that with the information that I’ve been provided,” Mulder said. “If you and your—friends—have any more information, that might be useful.” 

“You realize there ain’t nobody out here,” Merle said. “We’re on our own now. Nobody around. The police dropped out sometime yesterday, and the government’s behind them planes as sure as my ass is standin’ here.” 

“We don’t know what was going on with the planes,” Mulder said. His gut told him that Merle wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t ready to agree with everything the man said yet. 

“They were droppin’ flammable shit on rural communities,” Merle said. “Burnin’ ‘em up.”

“They might have been dropping flame retardant substances to stop the fires.” 

“They were gettin’ rid of the bodies,” Merle said. “And prob’ly the damn evidence of some shit. You know it.” 

“Why there?” 

“Look at us,” Merle said. “We’re the fuckin’ undesirables. Trailer park trash on the outskirts of everything. Who’s gonna miss that population?” 

“You’ve thought about this a lot,” Mulder said. 

“I been watchin’ the news,” Merle said. “Listen—there’s other shit you oughta know if you stayin’ here, but we ain’t goin’ to jail. No matter what. And we don’t got a lot to lose.”

“Is that a threat, Merle?” Mulder asked.

“Just valuable damn information a man oughta have,” Merle said. He laughed quietly to himself. “Especially a man that can’t hardly keep his eyes from trackin’ that lil’ bitty woman all over camp.” 

Mulder’s heart nearly stopped in his chest. He hadn’t realized he’d been doing it, but he had been. He’d been tracking Scully over Merle’s shoulder almost the whole time they’d been talking. Merle had set the gears in motion, and everyone was occupied. Mulder knew his feelings about the woman he’d been working with for some time, but nobody else did—not even Scully. 

Merle just smiled.

“Observant,” Merle said. “One of my favorite fuckin’ words.”

“I can see that,” Mulder ceded. “Look—I can’t promise you immunity, but it doesn’t look like they’re pursuing the murder of Ed Peletier any further for the time being. It may be that whatever you tell me helps me make sure that you’re all cleared if it should ever come up again.”

Merle considered it. He lit himself another cigarette.

“He come in the yard as a corpse,” Merle said. “I don’t got a damn reason to lie. Daryl weren’t gonna shoot him. Didn’t have the shotgun, at first. Was gonna whip his ass ‘cause it weren’t three days ago he went after that Mouse again. Check her yourself. Them war wounds is fresh. Didn’t shit slow him down. Daryl shot him ‘cause we was all about to piss our fuckin’ pants—first damn time dealin’ with a walkin’ corpse, you see?” 

“I can see how that would be unnerving,” Mulder offered, his gut churning at the possibility that the man was telling the truth. He’d already figured out that Merle had a certain flair for bravado, but this didn’t feel like some kind of tall tale. This felt like he was disclosing information in the most genuine way that he could. All of his earlier tells were gone.

“Losin’ his head slowed him down,” Merle said. 

“That will do it,” Mulder agreed. Merle laughed to himself. 

“He weren’t the only corpse we seen, though. We learned quick that the head—that’s the only way to stop ‘em.”

“You’ve seen more?” 

“Two meth heads from down the road—down our road. Come outta the woods this mornin’. Thought they was fuckin’ high. Made a grab for the girl when she was outside playin’. Her ma went in after ‘em. Andrea, too. Andrea’s ass took a kitchen knife. I saw her stab one of the assholes right in the shoulder. Didn’t slow down. Didn’t flinch. Tried to bite her face. I grabbed the shit closest to me—a shovel—and caved the fucker’s head in. Carol got the kid outta the way an’ Andrea shoved the other one down. I beat her head in, too, with the same damned shovel.” 

“You called the police?” 

“We was already thinkin’ it was a good time to go,” Merle said. “Fires were spreadin’, according to the news. It was gettin’ hot, if you catch my drift.”

“You’re sure they were corpses?” 

“Mulder!” Scully called out from where she was standing, looking a little exasperated, holding rocks she was arranging around the outside of their would-be fire.

“If it ain’t no inconvenience,” Daryl called out from where he was sorting out tent pieces, “how about put your damn dicks away and help us get this shit done!” 

Merle laughed to himself. He turned back to Mulder as he took a last drag on his cigarette and dropped it to the ground, grinding it out with his shoe.

“I’ma let you decide if they corpses,” Merle said. “Way things are going? I wouldn’t be surprised if death comes callin’ ‘fore the sun comes up.”


	4. Chapter 4

AN: Here we are, another chapter here. 

Of course, at this point, we’re still getting to know characters and situations, but we’re moving forward. I should, perhaps, mention that since this is kind of AU/ “original” I’m going to be playing with the characters in a lot of ways. I just want to stress that in case someone gets really worked up over following canon. I’m just not following canon closely, and that goes for both shows. I hope you understand! 

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

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Carol knew that, if there was very little that she was good at, one thing she was very good at was making things run smoothly. Years of dealing with an abusive husband who could be set off by the most minor inconvenience, disruption in his schedule, or missed chore meant that Carol could categorize, organize, and recall tasks better than most. It had become instinct. Survival. 

Those abilities were what had kept Sophia and her afloat since she’d left Ed. They were what helped her pay the bills, cover lawyer and doctor fees, and kept her from feeling like she had to go back to him again. She was thankful that she’d managed to get the restaurant job she’d gotten, and she was thankful that she had a boss that had recognized her ability to hustle and to get, and keep, others moving. Moving into a management position had, honestly, been the difference between finally breaking free from Ed and being forced to go back, once more, with her tail between her legs and admit that she didn’t know how to survive without him.

Moving quickly into a management position had showed her that she could survive without Ed—she’d always had that ability. It was never ability she’d lacked; it was resources. 

Her boss had believed in her, though. And that had gone a long way for Carol. It taught her that she could learn what she didn’t already know. She could adapt. She could grow. 

She could survive—though she may need a little help in learning what, exactly, was required of her to do so in a brand-new environment.

Merle and Daryl knew how to survive, too—they knew what was necessary and what could be done without in the wilderness. They’d told her stories about their hunting trips and how they’d sometimes spend weeks at the time, alone together in the woods, living off nothing but what they could find themselves. 

Still, setting up a quick hunting camp for two bachelors was greatly different than setting up a comfortable camp where seven people could stay, if needed, long term—especially if that camp needed to be built in a short period of time.

Merle dictated what they needed because he would know, off the top of his head, what were the most important elements of their camp. Carol made sure that everyone else was organized, efficient, and productive. 

For nearly a year, Carol had lived in the trailer across the lot from Daryl and Merle. During that time, she’d been woken up by noises, only to find police in the yard for various reasons, and she’d seen them take Merle away in cuffs more than once. She knew that Merle had a tendency to drink and he sometimes got too loud. He got a little mouthy, and he could be disgusting at times, but she believed he was relatively harmless. He had never—not once—tried to put his hands on her, Andrea, or Sophia. 

Carol had never been hurt by a man cussing too much or being crass and telling her he liked her ass or her tits, so she didn’t fear Merle Dixon.

Daryl was the quieter of the two brothers, but Carol enjoyed his company the best—perhaps because he was quieter. More than once, he’d invited her to sit with him, in lawn chairs placed between their two plots of trailer park paradise, and share a beer with him. Sharing a beer with Daryl Dixon often meant drinking a beer, watching Sophia play in the yard, and not saying a word.

But comfortable silence was something that Carol welcomed—especially after so many years of living in a home filled with only angry words.

Daryl did talk, of course, but usually only if he felt he had something to say. When he wanted to talk about something—like the day that he’d caught a snake in the yard that Carol had thought might bite Sophia, and he wanted to explain to her why it was relatively harmless and how she could keep herself, and Sophia, from being bitten—he could talk for what felt like hours. Daryl simply wasn’t a man who engaged in small talk for the sake of engaging in conversation, and Carol didn’t really mind that.

Neither men had any reason to be nice to her or her daughter, but both of them had. They were only her neighbors and, really, her problems weren’t their problems—yet neither of them had a problem confronting Ed when he’d shown up to walk right through his restraining orders. 

Daryl, even, had gone so far as to spend the night one night in Carol’s living room, making sure that Ed, if he were to try to break the door in again like he had before, would have a surprise waiting for him that he never expected.

Daryl and Merle would know what they all needed to survive, and Carol was certain that she could manage the group well enough to help them all accomplish—in the best and most effective way possible—what they needed to accomplish for the good of them all.

Andrea had been Carol’s roommate for nearly a year now. She was Carol’s best friend—the first and only female friend that Carol had actually had. They’d met at the grocery store when Carol had noticed Andrea struggling with her car. Carol normally wouldn’t approach someone she didn’t know, but the parking lot had been decently crowded, and Andrea hadn’t looked like much of a threat. Carol offered to jump her car off, and Andrea asked to buy Carol a cup of coffee or something in return. Carol had never had a girlfriend—and a cup of coffee with another woman had sounded almost like those wild girls’ trips that the books she read were always talking about. Carol thought it was serendipity when Andrea told her that she was just about to be out of her lease because the person she was renting from was getting married and had decided they needed the whole house to grow and expand their family. Later, Carol would wonder if she’d rushed too quickly into letting Andrea move in when she realized, moving Andrea’s boxes into the trailer, that she’d only learned anything, really, about Andrea while she moved her in. Far from being an axe murderer, though, Andrea was a legal secretary and, sometimes, a late night bartender when she needed a little extra cash—which she often did because, as Carol learned, being a legal secretary didn’t really pay as much as it sounded like it should.

Still, Andrea was hardworking and she followed instructions well. She was quick to learn things, and she wasn’t going to shy away from something just because it meant getting her hands dirty. She’d learned to fix most of the problems on her Pinto, after all, until the car had just given up the ghost and Daryl had finally convinced her that it wasn’t worth paying for the parts to fix all that was wrong with it and she’d do better to save her money for something better.

She was struggling with putting one of the tents together, and it was clearly not her strength, but she was persistent and, more than likely, she would get the thing assembled.

Of course, Carol didn’t know the FBI agents at all. They called themselves Mulder and Scully. At first glance, she could tell they were comfortable with weapons—they would have to be for their jobs, she supposed—and she assumed that might be a good thing if they were to encounter more corpses like the ones they’d already seen. She could see, too, that they were both physically fit or, at the very least, they appeared to be physically fit. The FBI, she supposed, didn’t allow couch potatoes on active duty.

Neither of them was dressed for camping and, if they had anything packed in the car that they’d driven from wherever they’d come from—she could assume Washington, D.C.—she doubted they’d brought things for camping.

Still, neither of them was complaining. At the moment, really, neither of them was really saying much of anything. Mulder was working through some of the tent confusion with Andrea while Scully carried and stacked wood for the fires that Daryl had roughly chopped near the edge of what his brother had designated—by running a length of thick, bright yellow cord around it and tying it to stakes he hammered into the ground—as their camp’s boundaries.

Sophia, clearly, was already fascinated with the female FBI agent. She’d already slipped off from Carol—just a few feet away—determined to help carry sticks with the woman instead of assembling sandwiches and doling out fruit and chips, from the back of the car, with Carol who was busy arranging plates to try to feed the crowd soon. 

Carol watched her, out of her peripheral vision, afraid that she might annoy the woman. Scully, however, didn’t seem irritated. Instead, she smiled softly at Sophia and looked genuinely interested in whatever it was that Sophia had to say to her. 

“Do you have a badge like the police?” Sophia was asking as Carol approached where Scully was arranging the last of the sticks that she’d dropped near her neatly organized stack. 

“Not like the police,” Scully said. “Not exactly. But—like the FBI.” 

“Can I see it?” Sophia asked. 

“Sophia—maybe you shouldn’t bother Ms. Scully,” Carol offered, approaching them.

“Scully,” the woman said. “Just Scully is fine. She’s fine. She’s not bothering me. And—sure. You can see it. It’s in the car.” 

“Later. OK?” Carol said. “For now—why don’t you go ahead and wash your hands. Sophia? You need to wash yours all the way up to your elbows. I don’t know how you got so dirty. Dinner isn’t much, but nobody should go to bed hungry tonight. Maybe it’ll give everyone the boost they need to finish getting everything put together.” 

Scully wiped her hands on her pants, clearly deciding that after crawling around on her knees in the dress pants, there was no need to worry about caring for the fabric any longer. 

“And tomorrow?” Scully asked, directing her question to Carol.

Carol shrugged. 

“I packed up nearly everything in the kitchen,” Carol said. “Daryl and Merle’s kitchen, too. We’ll eat the food out of the cooler first. The ice won’t last forever. But—there’s enough food for tomorrow and for some time after that. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” 

“I don’t mean about the food,” Scully said. “I mean—this camp that you’re constructing…that we’re constructing…looks pretty permanent. You can’t be planning on just staying here.” 

Carol smiled to herself. 

“Sophia—why don’t you go tell everyone that food’s ready, OK? Go with Andrea to wash your hands?” 

Sophia nodded her understanding. She looked a little disappointed to have to abandon her new friend in favor of an old friend, but she was pretty obedient. Honestly, she was very obedient. Ed had always said she was a brat—that she didn’t behave well enough. In reality, Carol sometimes wished her daughter misbehaved a little more because she knew that Sophia’s good behavior was, much like Carol’s ability to make sure that everything ran smoothly at all times, a learned survival tactic. 

Sophia darted off in Andrea’s direction—where the tent shanty town was coming together—and Carol turned back to face Scully. She reached a hand out, touching the woman’s arm and squeezing it when she didn’t balk at the physical reassurance. 

“I’m sure we’ll talk about it more over breakfast,” Carol said. “When everyone’s had a chance to rest from—everything. Everything looks different in the morning, right? Besides, we can take the camp down as quickly as we put it up.” She glanced around. They really hadn’t done too bad. Working together was paying off. They would eat, boil water to cool for drinking and maybe some for bathing, and likely hand out something like shifts for keeping watch for anything that might go bump in the night. Once they figured out how and where everyone would sleep, they’d be ready to call it a night, really, with few chores between them and some well-earned rest. Carol could see there was some apprehension on Scully’s features, though, even without knowing the woman well—and why wouldn’t there be? None of them knew what was happening. None of them knew what was going to happen. And none of them had even had the slightest possibility to digest what had already happened. All of that was true, but Carol still felt less afraid than she had in a long time. She squeezed Scully’s arm again, hoping to transfer some of her odd sense of peace to the woman. She offered her a smile. “Come on—let’s get something to eat. It’s just one night. You’ll get some sleep and you’ll—figure out what you want to do next. We all will.” 

Scully nodded at her. She didn’t say anything, but she did walk over to the area where they were washing their hands in a bucket of the cold water drawn up from the rock quarry.

Carol glanced around again. 

She felt exhausted—it felt like a million years had passed, and a thousand things had happened, since her ex-husband had come into the yard as a corpse. She hadn’t slept since then. Her eyes felt gritty and they burned. It felt like a thousand inexplicable and terrifying things had happened since she’d last closed them. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t know how, but the dead were walking when they had no way, at least as far as she understood it, to be doing that. The place she’d called a home since she’d left her ex-husband, and possibly the whole little podunk town where she’d moved to just put one zip code between herself and Ed, had probably been consumed by fire by now—a fire that might be slowly wiping more of the state off the map.

She ought to feel terrified. She ought to be beside herself with worry.

Oddly, though, Carol felt something else entirely.

She smiled to herself and started toward the station wagon where, in the back, she’d arranged the plates, after emptying out their luggage to make room, in order to dole out food for seven people. 

“There’s turkey, ham, and bologna sandwiches,” Carol said as she walked up to where everyone was starting to gather and examine the food laid out for them. “Plenty more if anyone’s still hungry. I can make more of whatever you like. Everyone—make sure you get all you want to eat. That ice won’t last forever.”


	5. Chapter 5

AN: Here we are, another chapter here. 

Several people have asked me, and we will see/encounter more characters from The Walking Dead.

I hope you enjoy the chapter! Let me know what you think!

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“Mulder, what are we doing?” Scully asked. She kept her voice low, but there was no need to talk too quietly. The others were asleep, and Mulder and Scully were some distance away from the tents, sitting on the open tailgate of Daryl’s truck. 

Mulder swallowed back the small wave of amusement that he felt bubbling up inside his chest. It had taken hours longer than he’d expected, but the question had finally come just as he’d thought it would.

“I’m keeping watch, Scully,” Mulder offered. “You’re supposed to be sleeping, but you’re not.” 

“Keeping watch for what, Mulder?” Scully asked.

“Anything that threatens the camp,” Mulder said.

“You mean—the walking dead,” Scully responded. Mulder swallowed down his humor. At least she probably couldn’t see much of his expression. The stars and moon were fairly bright, but it was still dark, and he wasn’t going to waste the battery in the flashlight unless he heard something or saw something that seemed out of the ordinary. 

“Something in your tone tells me you might be a little skeptical.” He knew she was skeptical, but he was on watch for probably another couple of hours before Daryl was set to relieve him. He might as well entertain himself and fill the time somehow. 

“Mulder.” Scully let his name hang out there like it was a statement all on its own. Mulder accepted it. He’d worked with Scully long enough to know how she was. She wasn’t going to believe anything that she didn’t see with her own eyes, and she was still likely to try to reject what she did see. There was an explanation for everything—a scientific, rational, sound explanation for everything—that was how Dana Scully saw things. There had been very few times when Mulder had seen her accept that there was something that she simply couldn’t explain. After she was silent for a moment, she sighed loudly in the dark. “Mulder—we’re…sleeping in a tiny, borrowed tent in the middle of nowhere, Georgia, with four people we don’t know.” 

“Five,” Mulder said.

“What?” 

“Five. Sophia’s a child, but she’s still a person.” 

“Fine. We’re sleeping in a tiny, borrowed tent, in the middle of nowhere, Georgia, with five people we don’t know.”

“We’re not sleeping right now, Scully,” Mulder offered.

“No,” Scully said. “Because we’re keeping watch for—corpses, Mulder. Walking dead people. Wandering around in Georgia with no thought except for tearing our faces off. Is that right?” 

Mulder laughed to himself.

“What else would you think that dead people think about, Scully?” He asked. 

“Mulder,” she said with a sigh.

Mulder laughed quietly to himself, then. 

“You’re frustrated,” he said.

“Of course, I’m frustrated,” Scully said. “I don’t know what we’re doing out here.”

“We’re keeping watch for the—what did Merle call them? Walkers? We’re keeping watch for Walkers, Scully. And for anything else that might come into camp. I don’t know—bears or wolves. Maybe coyotes. Whatever attacks camps in Georgia in the middle of the night.” 

“Do you believe in these things?” Scully asked.

“I don’t have any reason not to believe in them.” 

“How do we know that—they didn’t just make these…Walkers up? How do we know that they aren’t a fabrication to cover the murder of Ed Peletier? Or—even if they genuinely believe that they’ve seen them, how do we know it’s not some kind of drug-induced hallucination?” 

“You believe that all five of them had the same drug-induced hallucination, Scully? Even Sophia?” 

The little girl had stuck close to Scully all evening. She’d followed her around with practical stars in her eyes, and she’d done everything in her power, when they were deciding who would sleep where, to practically convince Scully to share a sleeping bag with her. 

Scully had been invited, as well, to share the large tent—the newest one purchased by the brothers who apparently spent a good deal of time camping and hunting to fill tags for money when they were “between jobs,” as they’d put it—that Andrea and Carol were sharing with Sophia. It was plenty large enough for all of the women and the little girl. In fact, the second tent, where Daryl and Merle slept, which was a little older than the largest one, could have housed Mulder as well as the two brothers. The smallest, and oldest, of the three tents could have simply been used for covering food and supplies.

Except Scully had requested—practically insisted—that she and Mulder would share a tent. Her insistence of such a thing had made Mulder’s pulse speed up and his stomach twist in response, but he was doing his best to convince himself that Scully was simply comfortable with him and, because of that, she would prefer to share a space with him than with strangers—no matter how cramped it may be.

“Children naturally have overactive imaginations,” Scully said. “They’re easily led into believing that they’ve seen or experienced something that never actually happened. Just the same as—they can be convinced that something that did happen didn’t happen, or was misunderstood. Mulder—it happens all the time. Children’s minds are malleable and can be manipulated. You know that as well as I do. Besides—there is a history of drug abuse. You saw it in the file.” 

“For Merle,” Mulder ceded. “But not for the others. The rest of them had clean records when it came to drug use. Carol’s a very vigilant mother, have you noticed that?” 

“Of course,” Scully said. “Given her history, though, and the information about Ed and the attacks…”

“So, it would stand to reason that she wouldn’t be the kind of mother to leave her daughter to fend for herself while she and everyone around her went on some kind of drug trip, Scully. That doesn’t fit the people we’ve met here. Even if I were going to believe they were all the type to be living in some kind of drug den, I just don’t believe that all four of the adults were on some kind of drug-induced trip where they happened to have the same vivid hallucination of being pursued by animated corpses,” Mulder said. “Even in the case that something like that did manage to happen, which is highly unlikely, they’re reporting that they saw this with not one body, and not two bodies, but with three distinct bodies at two different points of time.” 

“I admit that it’s unlikely for them to share hallucinations,” Scully ceded after a moment of stewing, “especially more than once. But—Mulder? Walking corpses?” 

Mulder laughed to himself.

“The autopsy report said he was dead when they shot him. You saw it. Cause of death was listed as non-conclusive. Maybe it was the virus. Maybe another one of those—Walkers—bit him or scratched him.”

“Non-conclusive doesn’t mean that it was scientifically impossible to determine the cause of death,” Scully said. “It means—they stopped short of finding it. Maybe there wasn’t enough evidence with what was left of the body. Mulder—what if they killed Ed Peletier with some kind of head wound, and then used the shotgun to cover up the real cause of death? Certainly that makes more sense than—walking corpses.” 

“Look, I know it’s crazy to think about the possibility of running into a walking corpse out here,” Mulder said. “But I’m not ready to just say they’re all lying, Scully.” 

Scully was quiet for a long moment. Mulder watched the darkness in front of him and the stars in the sky—appreciating how beautiful they looked with no lights in the surrounding area. He gave Scully the time she needed, fully aware that she’d speak again when she had something to say.

“So, what’s next, Mulder?” Scully asked. “What’s the plan? They sent us down here to do a job. You can’t just be planning to camp out here for—for how long, Mulder?” 

“I’d like to give it a little more time,” Mulder said. “Just to see if we can happen to encounter another one of these Walkers.”

“Mulder—instead of waiting in the Georgia wilderness for an ambulatory dead body to show up and try to attack someone, it might be a better use of our time to go back and ask to see Ed’s body. Maybe—something will turn up in an examination. Something they missed.” 

“Go back to what, Scully?” Mulder asked. “We may not know if these Walkers exist or not, but we both know that fire was very real. That town’s gone, Scully. The police station is gone. The bodies that Merle and Daryl hid? They’re gone, too. They did that autopsy locally. Ed Peletier’s body doesn’t exist anymore. It would be just sifting through ashes at this point.” Mulder sighed. “Look, Scully—we don’t know that Walkers are real. What we do know is that we’ve lost telephone service. We have no connection, right now, with the outside world.”

“Because we’re in the middle of nowhere, Mulder,” Scully said.

“We went right by Atlanta. We were close enough that we should have had some service. Something. But we didn’t. And you know that, too. We know all the radio stations are off the air. The only thing we’ve got left is that announcement, and it’s the same one over and over.” 

“It’s a national emergency, Mulder,” Scully said. “The virus was getting out of control before we left D.C. It’s spreading. They’re just trying to make sure everyone gets the message to get to Atlanta. That’s where we should be right now. Not out here waiting for—for corpses to show up.” 

“OK,” Mulder ceded, wanting her to move forward with him, for a moment, instead of lingering on that idea. “But what about the fire, Scully? The planes burning the town? Don’t you think it’s—odd? There’s a report of these Walkers—these living dead—showing up in this little town in Georgia. The next thing you know, there are planes making sure that it burns to the ground? You saw that fire, Scully. You know it was as real as I do. We could hardly outrun it.” 

“I know that wildfires happen all the time, Mulder,” Scully said. “Droughts happen. The planes were probably dropping flame retardant substances to stop the fires from spreading.” 

“You and I both know the government’s not beyond covering up a mistake or two, Scully.” 

“What are you saying?” Scully asked. “You think the virus is something we made?” 

“We made or we failed to keep contained,” Mulder said. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just thinking out loud, but those planes weren’t dropping anything to stop the fire. It didn’t slow the fire down at all, Scully. In fact, it grew with each fly over.” 

“Mulder—I think you might have sat with Merle too long over bologna sandwiches and corn chips,” Scully offered.

“Fine,” Mulder ceded. “We’ll handle it tomorrow. There’s nothing we can do tonight. We don’t know where we are and we don’t know how to get anywhere from here. After breakfast we’ll ask them to take us to Atlanta.” 

“You believe they’ll take us willingly?” Scully asked.

“Don’t you? I don’t think they have any intention of keeping us here against our will,” Mulder said. “They didn’t actually force us to follow them. Since we’ve been here, they’ve shared everything they have with us. I don’t get the feeling that they mean us any harm.”

“There’s a field office in Atlanta,” Scully said. “We might be able to get some answers.” 

“You might as well get some sleep for now,” Mulder said. “We can’t go anywhere until everyone’s awake.” 

“You both might as well get some sleep.” 

Mulder jumped, and he imagined that Scully did, too, at the sound of Daryl’s voice. A moment later, a flame indicated where Daryl was as he lit a cigarette.

“How long have you been out here?” Mulder asked.

“Long enough to know that the FBI don’t make good lookouts,” Daryl said. “Didn’t you two never run stakeouts or nothin’? Hell—you’d probably let the damn bad guy just walk away while you were yackin’.” 

“Easier to talk in a car without being overheard,” Mulder said, not bothering to argue with Daryl in any way. 

“Nothing’s come into camp,” Scully said. “At least—nothing bent on attack. We would’ve noticed that.” 

“So you would,” Daryl mused. He leaned on the truck near where Scully was sitting. “Listen—just so you know? None of us were high, OK? None of us. Not even Merle. I know how fuckin’ crazy it sounds. Sounds crazy to us, and we were there. Merle takes drugs if he can get his hands on ‘em, so we try to keep ‘em outta reach. I don’t touch the shit. Andrea’s so clean she prob’ly sells her piss to have money to send to her parents in Florida. And Carol? She wouldn’t never do a damn thing to hurt that lil’ girl. You hear me? Nothin’. She’s a good Mama and…she don’t even act like that, no way. She don’t even drink two beers in a row because it goes to her head. She’s—just a good person that got tangled up with an asshole for a husband.”

“We didn’t mean to insinuate anything,” Scully said.

“You didn’t know you was bein’ overheard,” Daryl said. “Other thing you oughta know is I got pretty good hearing—even if I pretend I don’t.” 

“I’m sorry,” Scully said. Mulder heard the sincerity behind the words. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Daryl said. “And—you ain’t prisoners here. You wanna go to Atlanta—find out what that all points bulletin is about that’s tryin’ to get the whole damn population to filter into the city, we’ll take you. Get you close enough, at least.” 

“Does that mean you’re not coming with us?” Mulder asked.

“Not all the way,” Daryl said. “We talked about Atlanta and them messages before you ever showed up. Somethin’ don’t smell right about all this. We’ll be stayin’ outta Atlanta, if you catch my drift.” 

“What about the virus?” Mulder asked.

“I’d rather die from it out here than crammed into some kinda shelter there,” Daryl said. 

“There may be more questions about the death of Ed Peletier,” Scully offered. “Someone may want to speak to you.” 

“Then you’ll know right where the hell to find me,” Daryl said. “Look—I mean it. We’ll take you close enough for you to find Atlanta, if that’s what you want, but we won’t be goin’ all the way. Go to bed. Get some sleep. You prob’ly gonna need it tomorrow. I got watch. Take your flashlight. I got one if I need it.” 

There was no need to argue or even to continue the conversation. Everything that needed to be said before the sun came up had already been said. Mulder and Scully both offered a goodnight to Daryl and received one back as Mulder helped Scully off the back of the truck. Daryl had navigated the camp in the dark, but Mulder didn’t feel quite so secure. He flicked on the flashlight he’d been holding for hours and dropped a hand to the small of Scully’s back to guide her back toward the little tent that they would share for the night.

Tomorrow, after breakfast, he was sure that the group would do just what Daryl said they would—they would take them close enough to Atlanta that they could finish the trip into the city on their own. There, they’d look for some answers.

Mulder couldn’t help but wonder, though, if Daryl’s hunch was right and Atlanta wouldn’t turn out to be the safe haven that the repetitive voice on the radio stations promised it to be.


	6. Chapter 6

AN: Here we are, another chapter here. 

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

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“I don’t feel safe just staying here alone,” Carol said. “I think I’d rather we all stayed together.”

“You’re right about that,” Daryl agreed. “Until we know more about what the hell is goin’ on, I don’t think it’s safe for none of us to split. At least—none of us that don’t have other plans.” 

“But what about the camp?” Andrea asked. “Will it be safe to just—leave everything?” 

“Daryl and me left camp plenty a’ times huntin’,” Merle offered. “Most the time people don’t even come up here. It ain’t a real popular area no time of year. It’ll be good at least as long as it takes us to get them close enough to see the way to Atlanta.” 

Scully glanced at Mulder. He was wearing an expression of amusement and, maybe, something else. They had made it through the night without any sort of alarm indicating that there were walking corpses among them. They had made it through breakfast the same way. During breakfast, Daryl had been the one to first bring up the fact that Mulder and Scully thought it might be best to head for Atlanta in search of some kind of information. After all, that’s what they’d been sent here to do—investigate what was taking place with the possibility of the reanimated dead.

“Douse the fire,” Daryl said. “Rest’ll be OK. Like Merle figured, it takes about an hour…hour and a half…to get to Atlanta from here dependin’ on traffic once we get closer to the city. Carol—we can all fit in your car if…”

“It’s fine,” Carol assured him, quickly.

They went about making sure that the camp was secure enough to leave it for a while, and Scully pretended to make sure that she and Mulder had packed everything that they’d brought—not that they had more than their two small travel bags to worry about. Mulder followed her toward his car.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” He asked.

“I don’t know what else to do, Mulder,” Scully said. “What are we going to do? Stay here forever? We’re not getting any answers out here. We haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary.” 

“Except the fire,” Mulder said.

“Which—without more information—could simply be a misinterpretation on our part,” Scully offered. “The field office should have some answers for us.” 

Mulder laughed to himself. 

“Since when have we ever gotten straightforward answers from asking for them, Scully?” He asked with a laugh.

“All I know is we haven’t seen one of these Walker things,” Scully said. “And until we do, we’re practically sitting around believing in ghosts that nobody can see, or hear, or touch, Mulder.” 

Mulder nodded.

“You’re right,” he said. “Until we have something else to go on, we’re wasting time.” 

“If we don’t like what we find in Atlanta, we can always come back,” Scully said. “Or—we close the case because there’s no evidence left. It just ran cold. We go home.”

“I’m sorry,” Carol said approaching. Scully and Mulder both turned to face the woman. She had her hand on the shoulder of her daughter, Sophia. “I didn’t want to interrupt you. Sophia just—wanted to say goodbye.” 

Scully smiled at the little girl, knowing already that she’d come to speak to her. She might say goodbye to Mulder to be polite, or because her mother might insist that she should, but she’d barely said anything to him since they’d arrived. She’d been following Scully around, though, as much as her mother would allow.

Scully liked children—a lot. And Sophia was a very likeable little girl. 

“It was very nice meeting you, Sophia,” Scully offered. She offered her hand out to Sophia and Carol dropped her hands from Sophia’s shoulders. Sophia took Scully’s hand and shook it, but she didn’t immediately let go of her hand.

“You don’t have to leave,” Sophia offered. “You can stay. There’s plenty of food.” 

Scully smiled and nodded. 

“I know,” she said. “And—you’re all very nice to offer us some of your food. But we have work to do.”

“For the FBI?” Sophia asked. Scully nodded. “Is it about the Walkers?” 

Scully’s stomach tightened. The little girl, like the rest of them, was certain that she’d seen all three Walkers that the they reported having encountered. 

“We’re going to find out all we can about the Walkers,” Scully said. 

“And you’ll make them stop?” Sophia asked. 

“If anybody can make them stop,” Mulder offered from over Scully’s shoulder, “it’ll be Scully.” 

Sophia looked pleased with a promise that Scully knew couldn’t be kept—if there were even Walkers at all. She launched herself forward and Scully accepted the hug that Sophia gave her. She promised the little girl that she’d try to see her again—even if it meant inviting her and her mother to see Washington, someday. And then Carol dragged the girl away to get her tucked into the back seat of the station wagon.

“You’ve got yourself a not-so-secret admirer, Scully,” Mulder teased when Sophia was out of earshot. “I think it might because you’re about the same height.” 

Scully rolled her eyes at Mulder, but she didn’t give him any kind of response that would egg him on. She didn’t have time, really to respond if she’d wanted. Merle was already approaching them. 

“Alright,” Merle said. “We’re ready to go when you are.”

“We’ve got everything,” Mulder assured him.

“Sure you ain’t gonna change your mind?” Merle asked.

“You think we ought to?” Mulder asked.

Mulder laughed to himself.

“I think they’re pushin’ pretty damn hard to get people into Atlanta,” Merle said. “And Atlanta’s bound to be full by now. I said it before. I’ll say it again. Somethin’ about this whole damn thing just don’t sit right with me, and my brother agrees.” 

“I guess we’re going to see for ourselves,” Mulder said.

“Suit yourself,” Merle said. “Follow us. We’ll get you down near I-20. With all your FBI education, the two of you oughta be able to take it from there.” 

Mulder accepted Merle’s plan, and both he and Scully quickly said goodbye to the people that would be travelling in the car in front of them. They may very well see them again—once things were straightened out and, especially, depending on what was decided about the death of Ed Peletier—but they were taking their leave of them for the time being. As soon as they’d said their goodbyes, they got into the car and Mulder followed the station wagon as it led them out of camp and back toward Atlanta.

There wasn’t much to say, so Scully simply sat and watched the scenery as they drove. Mulder had burrowed out a pack of sunflower seeds that he’d been munching on while driving to Georgia, and he spent the drive eating them and flicking shells out the rolled down window. 

Finally, they could see—over a ridge and still with some distance to go before they were close enough to consider themselves “there”—the evidence of traffic headed into Atlanta. The cars, from what Scully could tell, looked like they were lined up for miles and miles. Getting from the camp to where they currently were had taken about forty-five minutes, according to Scully’s internal clock. The drive to the interstate would easily take another fifteen—as predicted by the Dixon brothers. The trip into Atlanta proper, though, looked like it could end up taking them as long as it had taken to get to Georgia from D.C.

It wasn’t long before I-20 disappeared from sight again, thanks to clusters of trees and some twisting roads, and they were seemingly alone again, on Georgia backroads, with their travelling companions. They weren’t alone for long, though. 

As the vehicle approached, taking up more than one half of the road, the station wagon slowed. Mulder adjusted his speed to match Merle’s. The Winnebago slowed, as well, and Merle slowed even more when the window rolled down and an arm hung out to wave at them—clearly requesting that they stop, and not just exchanging greeting.

Merle stopped the station wagon, and Mulder stopped his car a few feet behind that. 

“What do you think’s going on?” Scully asked.

“Only one way to find out,” Mulder said. “Come on, Scully. Let’s stretch our legs.” 

It was clear that everyone else had the same idea. Stopped in the middle of the road, everyone spilled out of the vehicles except Sophia who, under Carol’s instructions, stayed in the station wagon with the windows rolled down.

From the Winnebago, two people appeared—an older man who looked like he might be headed to vacation in Florida for a while, or like he had just come from Florida, and a young Asian man who was wide-eyed and clearly a little keyed up at the moment.

“Don’t go that way,” the older man said. “You wanna turn around. Go back the way you came.” 

“They’re killing everybody! It’s crazy!” The young man seconded.

“Killing everybody?” Mulder asked, stepping forward and putting himself directly into the space where the exchange was taking place.

“We barely made it out,” the young man said. “I had to leave my car. It’s too crowded. They’re blocking the roads. Trapping everyone. They’re dropping bombs.” 

“Bombs or—or napalm,” the old man offered. “Something.” 

“Blowing up the whole city!” His companion added.

“Who is?” Scully asked. She looked at Mulder. She could practically read his thoughts. 

It was getting harder and harder to pretend that everything that was happening was circumstantial or even the result of some kind of hallucination. Now they’d just added two more people who, if they were going to explain things away in that matter, were having some kind of vivid hallucinations about some kind of possibly catastrophic destruction taking place in Atlanta—right where everyone in the area had been instructed to go as quickly as possible.

“The government,” the young man said.

Merle laughed to himself.

“Well,” he drew out. “Whatta you know? Saves time gettin’ rid of ‘em in mass, don’t it? Don’t gotta burn down the whole world.”

“Why?” Andrea asked. It was a question that was very likely hypothetical. She would know that none of them would have more than speculation to offer. She was hugging herself in the face of the disturbing news, though, and the question was likely only a verbal response to the psychological distress she was suffering.

“Get rid of the sick,” Daryl said. “The germs. Clear this whole plague or whatever the hell it is up by just burnin’ away everyone that’s come in contact with it.” 

“That’s murder,” Andrea said.

“It’s a massacre,” the old man said. “We barely made it off of I-20. I picked Glenn up running down the highway.” 

“My car was blocked in,” Glenn said. “Most of the people were still looking at the helicopters. Planes. Trying to figure out what was going on. I just started running.” 

“Good thing he did, too. I’m sorry—I’m being rude. I’m Dale. Dale Horvath.” 

Dale offered his hand out for a fraction of a second, but looked around like he was clearly not sure who to consider the person he should greet first, so he dropped his hand. 

“Mulder,” Mulder offered, without extending a hand. “Scully,” he said, gesturing at Scully.

“Merle,” Merle said, beginning the exchange where each one of their companions introduced themselves. 

As soon as the introductions were done, further exchange of questions took place. Scully listened to the exchanges, really contributing relatively little herself, and she felt her head swimming as it tried to make sense of everything she was hearing. There was no way, though, that she could possibly come up with logical explanations for everything as quickly as information was being presented to her. She could barely even process it all. 

Dale and Glenn, like so many other people, had heard the announcements to head to Atlanta. Dale had been travelling and, coming down I-20, had decided that he could make Atlanta before any of the other supposed safe havens. He’d seen them blocking off the interstate in places, so that traffic could head into Atlanta, but was discouraged from heading away from it, and he’d thought nothing of it. Glenn lived in Atlanta, but he’d been in one of the nearby communities outside of the city proper. He was headed back into the city when he’d gotten out of the car—in stand-still traffic—to look at the helicopters flying overhead.

Like many other people, he’d seen the bombs, or napalm, or whatever it was, that was being dropped on the city. Unlike the others, he hadn’t spent much time watching what took place. He’d made a run for it, realizing he’d never get his car out of the traffic jam, and that’s when he’d encountered Dale who hadn’t quite made it into the queue for entering Atlanta.

While trying to make sense of it all, and focusing on the next part of the conversation, which was a necessary discussion about leaving the middle of the road and heading back toward the safety of the camp to regroup and consider what was next, Scully heard a sound that she’d never heard before—one that she had no idea she’d be hearing a great deal in the future.

Seconds before the icy cold and oddly damp sensation was evident against her neck, Scully was aware of the sound of rustling in the underbrush—like some kind of animal passing accidentally too close to their small gathering. She was aware almost suddenly, of the strong smell of death and decay—a body that had been bloating in the Georgia heat for days.

At the touch, she swung quickly. Her mind wasn’t even able to fully process what she was seeing. Her lungs felt like they would explode with the scream that she couldn’t quite seem to release.

Before she could process what was happening, she was dragged roughly away by her arm. She heard her blood pounding in her ears. She heard Mulder yell her name—Mulder who was holding her with her back against his chest before she could fully process anything. As if everything was happening in slow motion, she saw Daryl step forward.

“I got it!” He called out, seconds before he wrestled the thing to the ground and shoved a knife through its eye socket.

Scully felt the gentle pressure of Mulder’s hand at her back as she closed the distance back to where the body was lying prostrate on the ground. Daryl was working to catch his breath; the surprise and exertion having made it temporarily labored.

“Thank you,” Scully said to him. He hummed in response. 

“You alright? It didn’t scratch you.”

“I’m fine,” Scully said, not sure if it was completely an answer or a statement. Daryl leaned over her, looking at her back, neck, and shoulders quickly. Seemingly satisfied, he gave her a little room and stood beside her instead of hovering over her. 

Scully stood looking at the body, almost entirely unable to believe what she was seeing. She had seen it move. It had touched her. Its fingers had grazed against her neck. She’d heard it—was that sound a growl? She’d seen it struggle against Daryl as he forced it down to the ground. Now, it was very clearly dead.

And, at least at first glance, it appeared to be a man—maybe in his forties or fifties—that was in an advanced state of decay.

Mulder rested his hand on Scully’s shoulder and she jerked from the residual shock. Mulder muttered a quiet apology, and then he squeezed her shoulder affectionately, this time transferring some comfort through his touch.

“What do you say, Scully?” Mulder asked. “You believe in these things yet?” 

Scully wasn’t sure what kind of answer she could give him. All she knew was that she was practically reeling with what she was seeing and the implications behind that. 

“Mulder…I don’t know if we should go to Atlanta,” she said.

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AN: So now we’ve got everyone (at least somewhat) on the same page. Everyone’s experienced at least one Walker. 

I hope you’re enjoying! Please let me know what you think!


	7. Chapter 7

AN: Here we are, another chapter here! 

Maybe there’s some slight Merle warning here. For anyone who doesn’t “know” Merle, he can be mouthy and crude sometimes. You learn to accept it, eventually. LOL

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

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Immediately upon returning to camp, the group didn’t sit and discuss what Dale and Glenn—their new arrivals—had seen in Atlanta. They didn’t discuss what it meant for all of them, or what the government possibly planned to do. They didn’t discuss, even, their plans for the future since, now, it was possible they were looking at a long future together.

Everyone, Daryl reasoned, was in a state of shock.

Instead of discussing everything as though they were capable of solving this mystery, they’d all naturally seemed to gravitate toward some state of trying to develop normalcy—though that normalcy looked a little different for everyone.

They’d gravitated toward getting and staying busy.

Wood was arranged, and their two fires were lit. Dale began to set up his Winnebago like he’d settled on this spot for a nice, long, camping vacation. The only words he spoke were spoken to Glenn and, instead of speaking to him like the strangers that they essentially were, he spoke to him like Glenn was his son and this was his first camping trip.

Scully, who was dealing with at least a little residual stress from having been nearly attacked by a Walker, had begged to bring the Walker back with her to camp. She wanted to dissect it. Examine it. Honestly, they probably would have ignored her and chocked the whole thing up to the antics of one crazy bitch, but she’d let slip something that made her dissection and examination a little more reasonable—and something that had made her infinitely more valuable as a member of this small, ragtag group that seemed to be forming.

Scully, it seemed, was more than just an FBI agent. She was a medical doctor.

She thought that an examination of the body might give her some insight into the Walkers—what they actually were, what had happened, etc. Maybe they might come to understand what was actually happening in the world around them. 

Daryl thought that insight into the Walkers could prove valuable. They weren’t talking about it yet, but Daryl knew that everyone was thinking about what was going on. They were thinking, too, about what that meant for their future. If the government was really set on killing people in mass—and obviously with no real discrimination—to destroy the virus or whatever it was that was causing all of this, then they were on their own; officially and indefinitely. Now, they had two enemies—the Walkers and the government.

Beyond the understanding that Scully’s expertise could provide when it came to the Walkers, though, they now had a vested interest in keeping the small woman safe and satisfied enough to stay put. She was a medical doctor and, especially if this thing dragged on for months, or even years, that might make her the most valuable person they could encounter. Daryl and Merle knew some basic first aid, and Daryl was almost certain that Carol must know a thing or two after her life with the asshole to whom she’d been married, but a real medical doctor was something else entirely.

Nobody had exactly relished the thought of a forty five minute ride back to camp with a rotting corpse, but the raised eyebrows that had been exchanged among them said that Scully would get what she wanted when the request was nothing more than something which she hoped would benefit the whole lot of them. Dale had some old sheets he used as tarps, and he’d offered them over to the group. They’d wrapped the body and stored it in one of the cargo compartments of the Winnebago to haul it back to camp.

Merle had dragged the body off some distance from the main part of camp, and Scully had planted herself out there with the corpse and supplies that she’d pulled from the back of their car. Mulder said he was helping her, but mostly he seemed to be looking on with disgust, and more than a hint of concern, as he kept watch to make sure that nothing bothered Scully while she focused on her work. 

Andrea was practically ransacking Dale’s Winnebago to create a kind of supply list of what they had, together, when they pooled their resources. Carol was helping her—her daughter never far enough away from her that she couldn’t touch her if she shifted her weight just right, especially since she didn’t want her watching whatever it was that Scully was doing to the corpse.

Seeing that things were settled, and realistic enough to know that they needed something substantial to go with the canned goods and things that Carol had brought—and to stretch the food as far as possible—Merle and Daryl had taken the opportunity to hunt while everyone was occupied. 

Daryl knew enough to keep quiet while they were hunting. Talking back and forth between them would cut down on their chances of finding anything decent to bring back to camp. Their silence paid off, though, and they hadn’t had to go far before they’d found a buck who was a little too slow in realizing that he was no longer alone. Merle shot the deer with his bow, and gathered it across his shoulders before Daryl could even offer to carry the animal. Daryl took his brother’s bow, instead, and shouldered it with his own. More than one deer wouldn’t be necessary—it would only be wasteful. It was safe to speak, once they started back toward the camp, since they didn’t need to worry about startling anything in their surroundings.

“What do you think, Merle?” Daryl asked.

“That’s a dangerous fuckin’ question, brother, without context.” 

Daryl laughed to himself. He lit a cigarette and then offered one to Merle, lighting it so that he could mostly keep his hands on the deer.

“About this…shit…virus or whatever the fuck it is. This camp. These people. This whole fucking situation, Merle.”

Merle hummed to himself, expertly smoking out of the side of his mouth without dropping his cigarette or needing the use of his hands to shift it.

“I know the government ain’t comin’ lookin’ for us. And, if they do, it ain’t gonna be to offer us a hand up. I don’t know shit about the virus,” Merle mused. “But I think Lil’ Miss Firecracker’s gonna know somethin’ about it. I’ll take it—whatever the hell she’s gonna have to offer. The camp’s just about the best damn camp we could have if we’re stayin’ long term. And I do imagine we’re stayin’ pretty damn long term. As for the people? Hell—mixed bag. Nobody seems scared of workin’, though. A willin’ person can learn just about anything. Means more mouths to feed and bodies to clothe, but it means more hands when we need ‘em, too.” Merle laughed to himself in a way that let Daryl know, already, that whatever he was thinking was off-color. Daryl laughed to himself and pressed his brother.

“What is it, Merle?” 

“I was just thinkin’—three women? Play our cards right, and maybe we don’t gotta worry about how damn cold the fuckin’ nuclear winter that’s probably comin’ is gonna get.” 

Daryl couldn’t help but be slightly amused. He swallowed most of it back, though.

“You’re a pig, Merle,” he offered.

“That’s alright—as long as one of ‘em likes a lil’ good damn sausage. Besides—don’t think that just ‘cause I’m the first one thinkin’ it, or even just sayin’ it, that I’ma be the last. The world might be upside fuckin’ down right now, brother, but some things just don’t never change.” 

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“Just put it there—on that sheet,” Carol directed as Daryl brought over the large chunks of deer from where he’d cleaned and butchered it with Merle before he’d sent Merle to the quarry to wash up. Carol disappeared a few moments, while he worked moving the deer, and reappeared just about the time that he brought the last hunks over and placed them in the pile for her to start cooking.

“This much meat, it’s a hell of a job. You gonna do this alone?” He asked. 

“Andrea’s getting wood with Sophia,” Carol said. “Then she’ll help. I’m going to get things started. Start planning—what to do with all of this and what we’ve got.” 

“Feedin’ everyone here ought not to be on your shoulders,” Daryl said.

Carol smiled at him and offered him the stack of clothing she was holding—the stack she’d brought from wherever she’d disappeared to a few moments before.

“They’re dry,” she said. “They dry pretty quickly on those rocks, but as long as we’re staying? I think it might be nice to hang some lines. Especially with so many clothes to wash.” 

“Hands are dirty,” Daryl offered, holding up his bloodied hands as evidence. 

“Soap and water,” Carol said, pointing toward the little wash station she’d set up for herself. 

“I’ll bloody up your water,” Daryl said.

“Lucky for me, someone found us a campsite with plenty of water,” Carol responded. She smiled at him and tipped her head to the side. It was a playful smile, and the smallest hint of wrinkles appeared at the bridge of her nose. 

Daryl’s heart drummed in his chest and his foot caught on the hard dirt as he quickly went for the washbowl. Carol didn’t mention his clumsiness, and he was thankful for that. She did follow him, though, to watch him as he washed his hands and arms—all the way up to his elbows.

“If you’ll leave me those clothes,” Carol said, “I’ll get them clean for you as soon as the meat is on the fire.”

“I’ll bring ‘em back,” Daryl said, his stomach tightening at the thought of stripping out of his clothes—or even his shirt. Merle might have very well gone so far as to drop his drawers right then and there, but Daryl and Merle were fundamentally different in a number of ways. Carol didn’t push or question him, though. Instead, she offered him a clean rag for drying himself before she offered over the stack of clean clothes. “You know—this shouldn’t all be your job. The cooking and the washing dishes—washing clothes.”

Carol smiled at him. He swallowed, but the spit stuck in the back of his throat. He’d never really noticed, before, how pretty she was—not like this. It disoriented him just a little to realize it—to realize that he noticed it and thought it…couldn’t stop thinking about it, actually, now that he’d started. Ironically, he thought she was prettier with the sun bringing out a smattering of freckles across her face and a little smudge of dirt on her cheek, than she’d ever been when she was put together from a trip to work or to town.

Daryl had never realized how blue her eyes were. He’d never realized how bright they were, either. There was something like a hint of—mischief? There was something there as she looked at him, holding his gaze for longer than was necessary. But, of course, he wouldn’t have known she was holding his eyes if he hadn’t been staring back at her. 

He cleared his throat and pulled his eyes away on purpose before he returned to looking at her more casually. 

Damn Merle and his fucking suggestions.

Carol laughed at a joke that hadn’t been told—one that, evidently, only she could hear.

“Nobody’s making me do anything,” Carol said. “Everyone’s doing something. Maybe we all do what we’re best at.”

“And you’re best at cooking and cleaning up people’s messes?” Daryl asked.

Carol’s smile hadn’t faded. She shrugged.

“I know it’s something of a popular idea these days that—women are out of the kitchen. We’re not just homemakers and…mothers. Maybe, I think, some women even think we’re supposed to hate those roles. The truth of the matter is, though, that—I have worked, and I can work. But I’m also a homemaker. And a mother. And I like that. I enjoy the cooking and the cleaning, really. The taking care…at least now that I can do it without my ex-husband’s particular brand of criticism.” 

Daryl’s stomach tightened at the mention of her ex-husband. He knew about the asshole’s particular brand of criticism, as she’d called it. 

“Shit like that ain’t gonna happen here,” Daryl offered. “Me an’ Merle—we wouldn’t stand for it.” 

Carol smiled to herself, softer this time than before. She gently nodded her head. 

“I know you wouldn’t,” she confirmed. “And—nobody here really seems the type. I can’t—remember if I said it or only meant to say it a thousand times, but…thank you for what you did. For—getting rid of Ed.” 

Daryl’s lungs were giving him a fit to join in with his stomach’s decision to act up.

He meant to say something great. He meant to tell her that he wished he’d done something sooner. He meant to say that the asshole deserved to die even worse than he had. He meant to say something that would really leave her thinking about…he wasn’t even sure what he wanted her to think about.

Instead, all he managed to do was somewhat incline his head in a half-hearted nod and grunt out a sound that might be understood for acceptance of her thanks.

His best attempt at recovery was no better, really. 

“Enough meat for two—three meals,” he offered. 

Carol smiled and nodded, not seeming too bothered by the rough segue in conversation. 

“Maybe more,” she said. “I can work magic in the kitchen—or—over the campfire, I guess.” 

Daryl laughed to himself.

“I bet you can,” he offered, grateful for the humor that loosened up what felt like tight laces running through his chest. “Thanks for the clean clothes.”

“Bring those you’re wearing back to me,” Carol said. “You’re hunting and butchering food for me and my daughter—for all of us. The least I can do is keep your clothes clean.” 

Daryl only managed another of his now-signature stiff-necked nods before he walked away quickly—kicking himself for not being better at conversation. He was watching his feet—and more than watching his feet, he was retracing the whole conversation for himself—so he almost slammed directly into his brother.

Merle was smirking at him when he looked up. 

“Fire somewhere, brother?” 

“Gotta go change,” Daryl offered.

“By all means,” Merle said, jokingly gesturing toward the area where the tents were arranged. He caught Daryl’s shoulder, though, before he could actually walk off. The poorly concealed grin playing at his lips said he wasn’t actually done talking yet. Not enough to let Daryl go free.

“You need somethin’, Merle?” Daryl asked.

“About to go make Firecracker give an account of her investigations up to now,” Merle said. “Figured—I’d see if you got along OK with that lil’ mousy thing. If she thought you…brung enough meat to the table.”

“There’s plenty meat,” Daryl said.

“I know there is,” Merle said. “Question is—do she?”

Daryl felt his face grow warm. All at once, it rushed over him like hot water being poured over his head from a bucket. His brother was not referring to the deer meat. Merle’s smirk grew as he recognized that Daryl had caught on.

“Couldn’t help but overhear,” Merle said, glancing in Carol’s direction where she, oblivious now to the two of them, was working out her grating system for cooking the meat—something she was constructing from their camping gear and the oven racks that Andrea had foraged from Dale’s Winnebago. “You don’t mind me sayin’, lil’ brother, but she admitted, herself, that the least she can do is keep your clothes clean—she ain’t mentioned what the most she can do is.”

Daryl’s stomach tightened.

“Don’t be a pig, Merle,” he warned.

Merle laughed to himself, snorting as he sucked in air quickly and almost sounding like the animal that Daryl often accused him of imitating.

“We could be stuck here a long time, Darylina,” Merle said. “A long damn time. Could be home sweet home for all we fuckin’ know right now. Mr. FBI has all but pissed a circle around that lil’ redhead—whether either of them knows it or not. All I’m sayin’ is you might be some kinda human sex camel, but ole Merle ain’t. If you’ve got in your head to make a claim—you might want to at least let me know about it.” 

Daryl glanced back in the direction of Carol.

He knew his brother.

“Don’t you mess with her, Merle,” Daryl warned, keeping his voice low. “You’re like a damn bull in a china shop when it comes to women that’s got feelings, and you know she just come off that ex-husband. Got a kid.” 

Merle smiled at him.

“You right, boy,” Merle offered. “She’s gonna need somebody a helluva lot sweeter’n my ass. Change your clothes, Daryl. And then come on over an’ let’s hear what our resident scientist is figurin’ out to save us all.”


	8. Chapter 8

AN: Here we are, another chapter here. 

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

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“What’cha got for us, Firecracker?” Merle asked as they walked up. 

If the woman was irritated by Merle, she made no indication. She’d already given up what she was doing, and she’d cleaned up her “area.” She was sitting a few feet away from the dissected corpse, with Mulder, drinking a bottle of water. There was frustration on her features, but it was clearly residual from her work and not related to Merle’s heckling.

She blocked the sun with her arm and sighed as she looked up at Merle. She shook her head.

“Not nearly as much as I’d like to have,” she offered. “And most of it’s speculation. I don’t have the labs or the equipment that I need to really study this like I want to.” 

“Anything you got is more’n we got now,” Merle offered. “Just—put that shit in English, and don’t fuck around with all your medical shit.”

A flicker of humor shown on her features. Mulder laughed to himself, as well, but he wasn’t interrupting Scully. He intended to let her be the one that presented her findings. 

“Well,” Scully said, moving to get up from her position. Merle offered her a hand and Mulder pushed her up, as well, so she was practically catapulted to her feet. She took a second to get her bearings once she was on her feet, and Daryl was immediately aware that woman was practically toddling around on shoes that weren’t at all sensible for the terrain she was navigating—and it wasn’t likely that she was headed back to city life any time soon. “As—completely unreasonable as it sounds, that’s a corpse.”

“We knew that,” Daryl offered, lighting a cigarette.

“It’s flayed on the ground, sweetheart, that ain’t rocket science,” Merle offered.

“It’s been a corpse for a long time, is what I mean,” Scully said, with a hint of irritation in her voice. “The level of decay suggests that this person has been dead at least twenty hours. Very likely closer to several days.”

“Which would serve as proof that the man was dead when he attacked Scully on the road,” Mulder added.

Scully nodded and sighed.

“I don’t know much about the virus. What I’ve found is conclusive with the information that we received about Ed Peletier—he was dead when you pulled the trigger, Daryl. This man appears to have been dead when you stabbed him in the eye.” 

“Gotta be the head,” Merle offered. “We seen enough of that with them other Walkers. You can hit ‘em anywhere else—however lethal you wanna do it—and they don’t go down until it’s the brain that’cha damage.” 

“What killed him, Scully?” Mulder asked. “Did you find that?” 

“You mean besides the knife through the eye socket?” Scully asked.

“If he was dead before, something killed him,” Mulder said.

“My first response to that might be the virus,” Scully said. “I don’t know enough about the virus to know exactly how it runs its course. That’s been kept secret from everyone, I would assume, that’s not considered part of a need-to-know group. It’s entirely possible that, as of right now, the virus is proving to be completely fatal.”

“Which might explain whatever Glenn and Dale have said about Atlanta,” Daryl offered. “If everyone that gets it is gonna die, and everyone that gets it is a threat, then they might figure it’s easier to clear people out in a big ole group like that.”

“That don’t justify killin’ everybody like that,” Merle said.

“It’s not a justification,” Mulder agreed, “but it might very well be a motive.” 

“There are some very clear bite marks on the corpse,” Scully said. “There was a lot of tissue damage and lost blood. It is possible that the man bled to death.”

“What kind of bites?” Daryl asked.

“I think you already know,” Scully said. 

Daryl nodded his head. 

“I do,” he said. “Even without examining the body. But—just the same, I’d rather you said it.” 

She looked around her at the surrounding trees and grass. The camp had a nice view, really. It was perfectly situated for nearly every camping activity. That was one of the main reasons why Daryl and Merle returned to the same spot so often. Daryl knew, though, that Scully’s looking around wasn’t her attempt to really enjoy her surroundings. She was visibly struggling with everything and, really, Daryl couldn’t blame her.

They were all struggling, but they were all doing it in different ways. It was a lot to take in and, in many ways, even the reality in front of them didn’t seem real.

“Human,” Scully said. “The bite marks are clearly human. And, from the looks of things, they were made by more than one human.” 

“He was attacked by more’n one of these Walkers—these walkin’ corpses, you could say?” Merle asked.

“It would appear so,” Scully said. “There are different bite patterns.”

“So, you believe he was dead when he attacked you?” Mulder asked.

Scully licked her lips.

“I believe that there are indications that he was dead. Or, at the very least, that his tissue was dead.”

“You gonna put that into English for the rest of us playin’ along?” Merle asked.

“Not knowing the full nature of the virus,” Scully said, “and—not having access to better equipment…”

“We don’t need the legal spiel,” Daryl offered quickly, seeing that the woman was struggling with the mass of things that were piled up on her plate, some of which she’d added herself. He laughed to himself, doing his best to relieve a little of the tension around them. “Ain’t nobody here gonna sue you if you wrong. We ain’t in no court of law. We’re just askin’ for your opinion, because it’s sure to be a helluva lot more specialized than either of ours.” 

Scully fidgeted a little. She nodded her head and gestured toward Daryl’s cigarette.

“Can I—have one of those?” She asked.

Daryl didn’t know why he did it—it was instinct, perhaps, or some sort of knee-jerk reaction—but he glanced at Mulder. Mulder looked a little surprised by the request, but said nothing. Daryl offered Scully a cigarette and, when she thanked him for it, he lit it for her as well.

Chances were, she’d have probably taken a drink, at that moment, as well, if one had been handy.

“I’ve got some theories,” she offered.

“We’re all ears,” Merle said.

“Well—there’s the possibility that the virus affects the brain in some way that I can’t study,” Scully said. “Maybe it does something to the tissue there that allows for some kind of partial reanimation after death. Like a kind of infection that we’ve never seen or…or even imagined before.”

“So, they die, and then they come back to life,” Mulder offered.

Scully inclined her head.

“Or—it’s possible that the body dies, in some way—the tissues die—but the brain is affected so that it doesn’t actually die. Most of it dies, but what’s needed for this rudimentary movement remains alive. The body begins to decay, even while the brain is still partially functioning, as a side effect of the virus.” 

“What do you think is the truth?” Daryl asked.

Scully laughed to herself, and Daryl could tell that the laugh wasn’t sincere. She wasn’t finding any true humor in their current situation—but who was?

“I think—that neither of them sounds possible or plausible,” Scully said. “I think that the only thing keeping me from believing that we’re all experiencing some kind of collective vivid hallucination is the fact that I can accept that this virus is real. And, as they’ve said on the news, it’s unlike anything we’ve seen or even imagined before. The unknown—and…unexamined—nature of the virus means that there are possibilities beyond imagination related to the way that it functions. And—without the opportunity to study it more, in a variety of individuals with a variety of different experiences—I don’t feel prepared to say, absolutely, what I believe happened to that man. Or, for that matter, what happened to Ed Peletier or the other people you encountered.”

“Walkers,” Merle said.

“What?” Scully asked.

“Walkers,” Merle said. “These things? They ain’t people no more. Not once they start actin’ like that. Lookin’ like that. Smellin’ like that. You said it yourself. If everything in the brain is dead except for what keeps ‘em attackin’, and if they whole body is rotted? They ain’t people. They’re just Walkers.” 

Mulder smiled and laughed quietly to himself. The sound drew the attention of all of them.

“Dehumanizing them,” Mulder said. “It’s a good idea. Better for our survival. Psychologically, as long as we think of them as people and call them people? We’ll believe that they should be treated as people—humanely.” 

“You can’t treat something that’s trying to kill you humanely,” Merle said.

“By dehumanizing them,” Mulder continued, “and creating a clear dividing line between them and us…”

“The livin’ and the dead,” Daryl offered.

“The infected and the not infected,” Scully said, as though the clarification made her feel better.

“The walkin’ corpses and those of us that ain’t yet corpses,” Merle said.

“Whatever we call it,” Mulder said. “The dividing line helps us to process what’s happening. It allows us to act without engaging our moral and ethical beliefs as readily.”

“And it keeps you from not reacting,” Merle said. “Because these assholes don’t stop comin’. And if you don’t react—don’t put a knife through an eyeball like my brother done on the road or take a head off like we done with Ed? If you don’t react? It’s your ass that’s next. Coulda been you we lost on the road, Firecracker. All chewed up an’ becomin’ one of these Walkers.” 

“Merle,” Daryl said, when he saw the color drain out of Scully’s face entirely.

“Sorry,” Merle mumbled. It was a half-hearted apology at best, but Daryl knew Merle well enough to know that, for Merle, it was about the best kind of apology you were ever going to get from him—if you managed to get that much. “Listen—end of the day, it don’t matter exactly how the Walkers turn to Walkers. When they get there, they’re done.” 

“We don’t know that to be true,” Scully said. “At least—not entirely. It’s possible that science could eventually find a cure that, if administered at a certain point in the infection, could reverse the effects of the virus.”

“But once you start to rot,” Daryl said, not bothering to finish the statement.

“Reversing the decay seems unlikely,” Scully ceded.

“And since we don’t got modern medical miracles handy,” Merle said, “we’re just gonna have to stick to kilin’ Walkers when it’s necessary to protect ourselves.”

“I don’t like the idea of just killing people,” Scully said.

“I don’t like the idea of dying, either,” Mulder offered.

“Like Merle said, it’s better to think of it that you ain’t killin’ people. You’re killin’ Walkers. Listen—there’s no great solution here,” Daryl said, “but I ain’t gonna roll over and die just so a corpse can keep on wanderin’ around, so if you got a problem with us puttin’ ‘em down…”

“I don’t see any way around it,” Scully said, shaking her head. “But it doesn’t mean that I have to enjoy the practice.” She sighed. “There’s more that you should know. That everyone should know if we’re going to be facing the possibility of encountering more of these things—especially since we don’t know, yet, what our plan is…”

“We’re workin’ on that,” Merle said. “Some kinda plan. For now, you just worry about the science and medical stuff. Share the burden a little.”

“Some of the science stuff,” Scully said, accentuating the words she borrowed from Merle, “I think is important for us to know. We need to spread it around to everyone here.”

“Go ahead,” Merle urged.

“We already knew that the virus is transmittable via body fluids,” Scully said. “That means that we need to be careful not to come into contact with the body fluids of the bodies we encounter. Keep open sores bandaged or covered. Wash immediately after touching them. That kind of thing.”

“Obviously it also means avoid bein’ bitten or scratched,” Merle said. “The news told us that before we even seen one of these things—when we thought it was just normal people with some kinda makes-you-angry-as-shit virus.” 

Scully nodded.

“If my theory is correct, then the part of the brain that is functioning handles rudimentary actions. The most basic motivations or instincts,” Scully said.

“The four fs,” Mulder offered with a laugh.

“The four fs?” Daryl asked.

“Fighting, fleeing, feeding, and fucking,” Merle said with a smirk. The humor passed around the circle. Scully was the only one who didn’t seem amused.

“We know they’re aggressive,” Scully said. “You reported it with your experiences and nothing provoked the attack on the road. There was no attempt at retreat. That tells me that something has disconnected fleeing from the list of concerns, but fighting remains intact. We can assume they’re all going to be aggressive.” 

“There have been no reports of sexual assault in relation to the virus,” Mulder said, clearly picking up the thread from his partner. “So, maybe that’s been disconnected as well.” 

“There are plenty of reports of biting and other attacks like that,” Daryl said. “It’s been all over the news and that’s what they do. They’re scratchin’ and bitin’ the whole damned time. Tryin’ to give you the virus.” 

“Or trying to make you easier and more convenient to eat,” Mulder suggested. “If the need to feed is activated, though, it could mean that they’re actively hunting. And that could mean that they’re hunting us.”

“We stay on our toes at all times,” Merle said.

“The eyes of this man were cloudy,” Scully said. “That normally happens about two hours after death. If the eyes are cloudy in all of them, which it would seem likely that they are, then it’s likely that their vision will be impacted.” 

“Blind?” 

Scully shook her head.

“Not blind, exactly,” she said. “But they’ll probably be limited to seeing things like shapes and movement. They can probably see light and shadows. It also means that their vision won’t be too greatly impacted by the light, or lack of light, in their surroundings.”

“In other words, they’ll hunt us in the night just as easily as huntin’ us in the day,” Daryl said. Scully nodded. 

“That’s not all. If their other senses remain intact the loss or weakening of one sense could mean a heightening in the others,” she added.

“Meaning they can hear us an’ smell us better,” Daryl said. Scully nodded again.

“We’ll keep a guard at all times,” Merle said. “Work up some protections around the camp. A warning system.” 

“We’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do,” Scully said. “It’s not safe to go back to Atlanta if what Dale and Glenn are reporting is true…”

“And I have a feeling it is,” Mulder interjected. 

“And it’s probably not safe to go to any of those locations that were announced as safe zones on the radio,” Scully said.

“Don’t worry about it, Firecracker,” Merle said. “We’ll figure out what we’re gonna do. For now—why don’t you wander on down to the quarry and get some water. See about a bath or somethin’. Unpack your stuff in your tent again and try to relax. You done with that asshole?” He pointed to the corpse. Scully looked at it and nodded. 

“What are you going to do?” She asked.

Merle laughed to himself.

“I’m gonna burn him,” Merle said nonchalantly. “Don’t’cha worry about that, neither. You done good. Earned your supper. Go take a breather.”


	9. Chapter 9

AN: Here we are, another chapter here. 

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

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Carol walked in the direction of where Scully was sitting and beating her shoe on the ground. If Carol didn’t know what the FBI agent was doing, and if she hadn’t witnessed the somewhat nasty tumble that she’d taken, she might have thought the woman was having a tantrum like a child. Carol knew, though, that she was simply trying to break the hells off of her high heels to create a shoe that—though not very comfortable or suitable at all—might be more suitable to the terrain around them than what she currently possessed.

Sophia trotted along beside Carol—a half a step in front of her—with her arms burdened down with her “helpful tools.” Carol had to demand to her daughter that she not go running after Scully the moment that she’d fallen. In order to keep Sophia occupied while Carol had gathered a few things for the woman, she’d given Sophia the job of putting together a quick first aid bundle with specific items that Carol requested. Sophia had done quite well, so Carol thought. That bundle and the small plastic bucket of water was enough to make Sophia feel like she was doing something—and to slow her down just a touch.

“Miss Scully!” Sophia called as she got closer to Scully. “I brought something to clean your hands!” 

Scully looked in Sophia’s direction and, consequently, in Carol’s direction. She squinted at them, the sun burning her eyes, and then she raised an arm to somewhat use it to shade her eyes from the glare.

“I’m sorry?” She said.

“Your hands!” Sophia repeated, as loudly as she had before but without the distance. “I brought something to clean your hands!” 

Sophia reached her and put down her spoils next to Scully. Carol closed the distance between herself and the woman, but she didn’t hover too much—Sophia was doing enough of that for everyone.

“We saw you fall,” Carol said. “Call it being a mother, but I know what that kind of expression, while staring at your hands, means after a fall. You scraped your palms.” 

Scully glanced at her palms. They weren’t actively bleeding, but Carol caught a quick glimpse of some dried blood. 

“They’re not bad,” Scully said. “I’m clumsy and I—wasn’t paying attention to where I was walking, honestly. I was thinking about…everything.” 

Carol offered her a reassuring smile. Her cheeks had run pink. It wasn’t entirely impossible to believe that someone might be embarrassed by a fall—especially one that resulted in scraped hands and, very likely, scraped knees.

“There’s a lot for everyone to think about,” Carol offered. “And it’s a little rough out here. Uneven. You’re probably lucky that you didn’t get hurt worse than you did.” 

“It’s just a couple of scrapes,” Scully said. “I’ve had worse.”

“So have I,” Carol said. “Still—you’re the medical doctor. You’re not going to make me be the one to argue the importance of cleaning that out so it doesn’t get infected out here, are you?” Scully smiled to herself, and Carol smiled at her in response. “Sophia—thank you for carrying that for me and for Miss Scully.”

“Scully, please,” Scully said quickly. “If we’re going to be out here for…a while…there’s no need for the formality.” 

Sophia looked at Carol, very clearly, to ask if it was all right. It was a big deal to get to call an adult by some title that didn’t require some kind of prefixing title. Everyone present at the camp, though, had already made some kind of similar request. Nobody, it seemed, thought that Sophia was being disrespectful if she omitted a formal title of sorts. 

“It’s fine,” Carol said, nodding her head in Sophia’s direction. “Sophia—could you please go and check on Andrea? Make sure she doesn’t need your help?” 

Sophia looked directly at Scully.

“Do you need me to help you wash your hands?” Sophia asked. “I’m pretty good at Band-Aids and things.” 

“I’ll be fine,” Scully assured her. “Thank you.” 

“I don’t mind helping,” Sophia said. “It can be hard sometimes to get to some spots.” 

“Sophia…” Carol said. Sophia looked at her and frowned. Carol gave her enough of a reassuring expression to let her know that she wasn’t in sincere trouble, but not enough to let her off the hook entirely. “I can help Scully if she needs it. Please go and see if Andrea needs your help.” 

“Yes ma’am,” Sophia said. There was more than a hint of disappointment in her voice when she said goodbye to Scully and darted off back across the camp. Carol watched her go and laughed to herself.

“I believe she’s a little bit smitten with you,” Carol offered. “She used to be that way about Andrea. Now look how disappointed she looks to have to go and help her.” 

“I don’t know why,” Scully mused.

“You’re someone new,” Carol said. “And you’re—someone to look up to. An FBI agent. And a doctor. That’s exciting.”

“It’s not that exciting,” Scully said. 

“For all of us it is,” Carol said. “We’re waitresses. Secretaries. Handymen and mechanics. Not FBI agents and medical doctors. Here, I brought these for you.”

She sat down near Scully, now, and showed her the clothes that she’d gathered together. It was just a complete set of regular clothes, a couple of pairs of socks, and a pair of sneakers.

“Oh, no,” Scully said quickly. “I can’t take your clothes.”

Carol frowned at her. 

“I watched you two unpack,” Carol said. “You have one little bag. That’s it. One bag. How many normal outfits did you pack? Not suits—everyday clothes.”

Scully laughed quietly to herself.

“We must seem like the most ill-prepared people on the planet,” Scully mused. “The truth is—it’s not unusual for us to end up in situations where we’re not exactly dressed for the job we end up having to do, but this time it looks like it’s going to be a little longer than usual before we can run home and change.” 

“How many?” Carol pressed.

Scully shook her head.

“I just brought the suits. I know Mulder did, too. It was a last-minute decision to even come on the trip, and it wasn’t going to be something that really allowed for a lot of down time. I didn’t even bring running clothes, like I normally would, because I thought it would be cut and dry. We’d be down here with just enough time to get our work done and then we’d be back in Washington.” 

“So, you’ll take the clothes,” Carol said. 

“What about you?” Scully asked. “I can’t take your clothes just because I’m not prepared.”

“That’s exactly why you’ll take them,” Carol said. “Listen—we knew we were leaving. We had time to pack. We knew we weren’t coming back for a long time, if we ever came back at all. The minute that a living corpse comes into your yard and—you have to kill it again? You kind of know your life is changing, even if you’re not exactly sure how. Then, when the police questioned us and it was pretty clear that they didn’t know what was going on?”

“If you ran, and they wanted to find you, you’d be in trouble for running,” Scully said.

“Maybe we’re all crazy,” Carol said. “Or maybe it’s a chance we were all willing to take. We’d already seen the helicopters and the planes. Merle had gone several miles looking at what was going on. He knew what they were doing and what was coming. If my choices are run and maybe pay for it later or stand still and let my baby girl be killed? They’ll find me eventually. Or they won’t. Either way, I don’t care.” 

“I don’t think they’re looking for you,” Scully said. “I’m not sure they’re looking for anyone right now. Even if they did try to find you—I can testify for you that these things are what you say they are, at least to the best of my medical knowledge. Without a body, I don’t know how Ed Peletier died the first time, but…I don’t think the rifle shot killed him. At least—maybe not the first time.” She sighed and pressed her fingers to her temple.

“It’s OK,” Carol said. “We’re all feeling overwhelmed and none of us have any answers. I can tell you like facts and science, but maybe it’s just easier to accept that they’re corpses. Walking corpses. And—they identified some bite marks on Ed. They said he had the virus.” 

Scully nodded her understanding. 

“On the one hand, something is telling me that I should go to Atlanta. Maybe we should even head for D.C. On the other hand, something is telling me to stay right here.”

“Your sense of duty, perhaps, wants you to go. Your sense of self-preservation knows it’s safer here. We’re safer here.”

“For how long are we here?” 

“As long as we have to be,” Carol said. “If the camp’s not safe anymore, we’ll move. We’ll find somewhere to go. Another camp. Daryl and Merle will tell us when we need to move.”

“You put a lot of faith in them,” Scully said.

“I do,” Carol said. “They’re very smart. And—Merle’s a little crass and a little rough around the edges, but he knows what he’s doing. They both do. And Daryl’s one of the most genuine, and one of the sweetest, people you’ll ever meet. Even when they were threatening to take him to prison for murder, he told them he wasn’t sorry for shooting Ed.” 

Scully hummed.

“He knew he wasn’t guilty,” Scully said.

“And we all know that doesn’t always mean much with the justice system,” Carol said. “I’m sorry if—that hurts your feelings, since you work for the FBI.”

“I know as well as anyone what the government is capable of,” Scully assured her. “Maybe more. I just wish—I knew what was going on right now. I feel further on the outside than I’ve been in a long time.”

“It’s safer on the outside right now,” Carol said. 

“I wish I knew what’s happening in D.C.” 

“Do you have family? Did you leave someone behind?” Carol asked.

“My mother,” Scully said. “My sister. I have two brothers. They have families. All of them—they would have gone to the safe places as soon as they heard the announcements on the news. My mom would’ve been worried about me.”

“Don’t use the past tense,” Carol said. “Here—give me your hands.” 

“You don’t have to do that,” Scully protested when Carol took her hands and, using the soap, clean cloths, and the water that Sophia had brought, delicately washed at the scrapes to get the dirt out.

“It doesn’t bother me to clean wounds,” Carol said. “Thanks to Ed, I know more than I probably should about most first aid. Probably not like you, but…I get by well enough to avoid most doctor visits. And—as a mother, I know how to clean a few scrapes from falling down. It’s always better to clean them when they’re nothing but genuine, simple accidents. I don’t think these need to be bandaged. Not if you don’t get your hands too dirty the rest of the day.” 

“I can do anything that needs to be done,” Scully said. 

“So can everybody else. Roll your pants up. Let me see your knees.”

“What about you?” Scully asked, giving in and doing what Carol asked without arguement. “Did you—leave any family behind?” 

“My parents are dead,” Carol said. “I was an only child. I always wanted a big family. Like yours. I wanted to have five or six children, I thought. Ed was a terrible father to Sophia, though. I was very careful to make sure that I didn’t have any more after her.”

“There’s always time,” Scully said. 

Carol hummed.

“There is,” she agreed. “You’re good with children. Do you want them?” 

“I was raised Irish Catholic,” Scully said. “I’ve always thought I’d have a big family. Someday. When things are right.” 

“There’s always time,” Carol said with a laugh.

“Part of me wonders how true that is with everything that’s going on,” Scully said.

“I guess there’s still as much time as there was,” Carol offered. “It depends on how you look at it and what you believe. Your knees aren’t so bad, but I do have a Band-Aid if you want to cover that part.”

“They’ll be fine,” Scully assured her. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.” 

“I wanted to,” Carol said. “We might be out here for a while. I hope—we can move beyond being suspects and FBI agents.” 

Scully smiled to herself and nodded.

“I think we already have,” she said. 

“Good,” Carol said. She stood up and gathered up the things that Sophia had brought over. “There’s no rush, but you can change into that whenever you’re ready.”

“I don’t want to take your things,” Scully said.

“I have plenty of things,” Carol assured her. “And Andrea’s getting an outfit together for you once I relieve her at the fires. That way you’ll have two and you can’t try to turn it down because it’s too much from any one person. They probably won’t fit perfectly. They’ll be a little big, but it’s better than nothing.” 

Scully frowned gently, and Carol could tell that the gesture had moved her—probably more than she’d expected and certainly more than Carol had expected. Still, Carol knew that, when you were in need of kindness, the smallest kindness could feel like the greatest.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Scully said. “I don’t have anything to offer.” 

Carol smiled at her.

“I don’t really need much,” she assured her. “None of us do. Right now—all of this? It’s complicated. We’re all overwhelmed. I guess—I’d just settle for a friend, personally.” Scully nodded, perhaps unable to speak, that she could agree with such a trade. Carol smiled to herself. “If you want, after you change, you’re welcome to come and keep us company at the fires while we wait for everything to cook.”


	10. Chapter 10

AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

For those who watch either show, since this applies to both of them, I just want to say that there will be some changes with characters simply because this is something different for everyone. Most things will remain the same, of course, but I am being a little flexible. It’s AU, after all.

A few days have passed since our last chapter, for the record. There will be some mini-time jumps. 

That being said, I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

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Carol had tended the small fire, feeding it barely more than leaves and twigs, only long enough to coax from it the heat that she required to get the camping coffee pot to render up the liquid she desired. As soon as the coffee was ready, she poured it into the metal camping mugs, moved the coffee pot out of the way, and kicked dirt over the flames to put them out.

Taking the coffee mugs in hand, Carol walked slowly and steadily toward the truck. Despite the somewhat rough terrain that had holes in unexpected places and offered up loose gravel-sized rocks to throw someone’s step, Carol was confident that she could make the walk, in the dark, without getting hurt. She felt like she’d practically memorized, as a sense memory, the path between the fire pits and just about any other part of the camp in the past few days. She knew that this particular path that she intended to walk was fairly smooth and, if walked slowly enough, she could feel any dips before she caused herself to fall.

The flicker of a lighter and the burning tip of a cigarette in the darkness ahead of her suddenly became like something of a north star. Carol walked carefully toward it and felt a rush of satisfaction and accomplishment when she reached the truck.

“Coffee,” she said.

“That’s what you were doin’?” Daryl asked. Carol hummed at him, though she supposed that the question was honestly hypothetical. He took the cup from her. “Thanks. I shoulda come and helped.” 

“Then who would have been keeping watch?” Carol asked.

She rested her own cup on the truck and hopped up on the tailgate beside Daryl. She picked up her coffee cup and warmed her hands on the metal cup—not that it was cold in the least. In fact, they would probably all welcome when the cold did start to settle in—at least a little. Georgia summers could be miserable.

“You didn’t have to make coffee,” Daryl said.

“You’re right,” Carol said. “I didn’t.”

“Everyone knows there was good coffee to be had, they gonna be sorry they’re asleep.” 

Carol laughed to herself. She sipped the hot liquid. It was good coffee as far as coffee made over a campfire went. 

“Nobody’s stopping them from making coffee when they’re on watch,” Carol offered.

“You make it better. Besides—I’m the only one lucky enough to be assigned watch with someone who actually thinks of that kinda thing,” Daryl said. 

“Call it my training,” Carol said.

“You mean at the restaurant?” Daryl asked.

Carol hummed.

“I think I was in training before that,” Carol admitted. “Have everything perfect. As perfect as I could, at least. To minimize problems. Anticipate every single need that Ed had before he even knew he had it. Anticipate Sophia’s needs, before she knew she had them, to make sure that Ed didn’t feel inconvenienced by her existence and her need.” 

“Guess—if people had to turn into these monsters and get their heads blown off,” Daryl mused, “he was a good damn one for it.” 

Carol laughed to herself.

“I guess he was,” she agreed. “Small gifts, right?” 

Daryl hummed his agreement.

Carol wasn’t even a full year out of her marriage with Ed. It felt like so much more time than that had passed, though. Her life with Ed felt like an entirely different lifetime. In fact, after only a few days, her life with Andrea, in their little trailer, seemed like another lifetime. A hazy blanket of trauma, stress, and anxiety hung over her memories of life with Ed, pushing them into some kind of mist. A veil of confusion, overwhelm, and worry-driven reaction separated her from the life she’d lived only days ago.

At this moment, Carol wasn’t feeling the stress and strain that she’d lived under for years. In fact, she felt almost guilty for the way that she was feeling. As they were easing into this life here—no matter how unexpected and bizarre it was—Carol was starting to feel relaxed. It was the first time she could remember feeling relaxed in a long time, really. 

Ed Peletier was dead. He was gone. He would never touch her or her daughter again. She ran that thought around inside her head throughout the day. She lived, happily, with that knowledge.

The expectations surrounding this life were simple. She would cook. She would clean. She would gather wood, tend wounds, and do any of the other daily little things that were required of all of them. Everything that Carol had to do was simply something that would help them survive—that would help all of them survive. 

And her work was appreciated.

The uncertainty of what was happening around them, what was yet to come, and how everything might unfold still weighed heavily on Carol, but she thought that, maybe, it didn’t weigh as heavily as it did for some. 

Carol felt like she could breathe in a way that she hadn’t felt able to breathe in a long time.

With the thought, she drew in enough of the clean night air to fill her lungs. She held her breath for a moment and let it out slowly. 

“You OK?” Daryl asked.

Carol felt her face burn warm. She’d almost forgotten that he was there. His company wasn’t overbearing. He didn’t demand constant attention and, more than that, his presence didn’t demand constant vigilance. Carol could let her guard down. She could relax around him. She’d relaxed so much, in fact, that for a moment she’d simply forgotten he was there keeping quiet watch with her in the night, just in case one of those creatures might trip their wires and need to be taken out before they could harm anyone who was sleeping in their make-shift little “town.” 

“I’m fine,” Carol said, swallowing back her slight embarrassment. “Just—the air is nice.”

“You think?” Daryl asked. Carol hummed. “Kinda muggy to me. We stay livin’ out here too long, though, and it’ll be autumn before we know it.” 

“Do you think we’ll stay that long?” Carol asked.

There was silence, but Carol didn’t feel the need to interrupt it, really. She knew that Daryl would speak again when he had worked out what he wanted to say. Her eyes, now, were readjusting to the night around her and she wasn’t temporarily blinded by having been in the light of the fire. She could see Daryl sitting next to her, even if she couldn’t see every slight movement of his features. He was gnawing his thumb, working bits of skin loose from his cuticles in an almost methodical manner. If she’d learned anything during the evenings when they’d sat out on the lawn between their trailers, it was that Daryl tended to keep his hands and mouth busy as much as possible, like a compulsion—especially when he was thinking.

“The government’s blowin’ people up,” Daryl said. “Killin’ ‘em with napalm or whatever it is. Burnin’ people alive—because you know not everybody got outta the way of that fire, and not everybody was already dead.” 

“I know,” Carol said, her stomach tightening at the thought of it. She’d been pushing those thoughts as far out of her mind as possible. She wanted to focus on what was in front of her—here and now. It didn’t help her to sit and think about everything else.

“I got a feeling it don’t go back to what it was,” Daryl said. “Don’t wanna—scare you, or anything. Just my opinion.” 

Carol drank some of the quickly cooling coffee. It was something to do more than anything. It was soothing to simply drink something.

“I feel the same way,” Carol said. “Like—that’s all gone now.”

“It is gone,” Daryl said. “Technically.” 

“Burned away,” Carol mused. Something stirred inside her, though. The realization, perhaps, that she meant the words in far more than just their literal meaning. Daryl hummed.

“We’re here as long as we gotta be,” Daryl said. “As long as we can be.”

Carol shifted around. She drew her legs up onto the tailgate to change her position. The hard and unforgiving metal of the tailgate wasn’t terribly comfortable for long stretches of time.

Beside her, Daryl lit another cigarette. He asked her if she wanted one, but she declined.

“You tired?” Daryl asked. He spoke again before he gave her the chance to even answer the question. “I don’t know why Merle was insistin’ that you gotta keep watch with me. He knows I’m good. If I say I’ma stay up—even if it was all night and not half the night? I’m good. I won’t fall asleep on the job.” 

“You’re dependable,” Carol said, smiling to herself. “Trustworthy.” 

“I don’t know about all that,” Daryl said. There was something in his voice. Carol heard it. She’d heard it before. It was equal parts rejection—like she’d just said something entirely ridiculous—and longing for more. She’d heard it almost any time that she’d paid Daryl any kind of compliment. She thought she understood his reactions. 

Carol had seen Merle mowing the grass many times, especially since he or Daryl always offered to mow the grass around Carol and Andrea’s trailer, insisting that two yards was no harder to cut than one with the push mower. Daryl mowed grass with his shirt on, no matter the weather. Merle, however, had no qualms about stripping half naked to do the dirty job.

Carol’s reaction, the first time she’d seen the angry, red scars that slashed across Merle’s back in every direction, was visceral. She’d recoiled. She’d practically felt them. She’d felt the hatred and the anger that must have put them there. 

And then, she’d sat down with Sophia and she’d explained to Sophia that Merle might not want to talk about his scars so that she wouldn’t run out the door and ask him about them as she passed him a cold glass of lemonade as thanks for his work. Still, her efforts hadn’t exactly worked. Sophia had still asked him, though she’d done so as delicately, perhaps, as a child could. 

Merle hadn’t been offended. At least, he hadn’t responded negatively to Sophia. Instead, standing in the shade, drinking the lemonade and smoking a cigarette, he’d explained the scars to Sophia in a way that, unfortunately, Sophia had been able to understand all too well. 

His old man had been an angry asshole, and his Mama hadn’t always been able to stop him from showing how angry he was. 

An awkward kinship had developed, at that moment, between Sophia and the eldest Dixon brother—her Mama had almost always been able to stop her father, but she knew about the anger, and she knew about scars because she’d seen her fair share on Carol’s body, unfortunately witnessing when many of the wounds that caused them had been inflicted.

Carol understood about scars. She also understood the desire to keep them under wraps, and the concern about other people’s reactions to them. She had never asked Daryl if he had scars—and neither had Sophia, because she’d never quite connected the dots in the same way that Carol had—but she imagined he must. She imagined, as well, that might be one of the reasons that he was careful to keep so much distance when he took his water to bathe.

Daryl was very different than his brother in a lot of ways, and Carol imagined that one of those was his need to hide his scars. The other difference, perhaps, was that Merle was a bit over the top—almost theatrical—with his arrogance; which often led Carol to wonder if he was trying to convince himself of his confidence as much as he was trying to convince others, while Daryl was somewhat reluctant to speak positively of himself. 

Daryl clearly didn’t know how to take compliments, either, but that almost seemed like all the more reason for Carol to offer them, especially when she felt they were true.

“It’s true,” she insisted. “We can rest easy. Relax. Knowing that you’re going to help keep us safe. Take care of things.”

“Merle’s the one knows about most of this,” Daryl said.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Carol said. “I’ve seen you take care of Merle plenty of times since I’ve known you. When he gets drunk or…high.” 

“It’s different,” Daryl insisted.

“You’re right, it’s different,” Carol said. “But my assessment still stands, Daryl.”

“You can go to bed if you want,” Daryl offered after a moment of slightly tense silence. “You don’t really gotta stay up half the night.”

“I’ll do my time like everyone else,” Carol teased.

“Seriously,” Daryl said. “You got—Sophia. She’s always needin’ somethin’ from you. And—you know first thing in the mornin’ you’re gonna have to start breakfast.”

Carol smiled to herself.

“I have help,” she said. “Andrea and Scully—even Dale. They do everything I ask, almost the moment that I ask it.” 

“But they all wait for you to tell ‘em what to do,” Daryl said. “Put it on you to know what needs to be done.” 

Carol thought the swell of pride that she felt was, perhaps, out of place. They were all hard-working, intelligent people. They would figure out that fires needed to be started and breakfast needed to be sorted. They would figure out how to divide up the supplies that they had—especially now that she’d organized it so neatly—and they would figure out how to stretch it as much as possible to keep the group going for a while before they had to search out supplies. If Carol wasn’t there, they’d figure it out, but it still made her feel oddly proud that her contribution was recognized. 

“I’m not tired,” she asserted. “Especially not after the coffee. But—if you’re saying that you want me to leave, Daryl…”

“No—just—I don’t know why Merle insisted you had to be up half the night,” Daryl said. 

“Everyone’s doing watch in pairs,” Carol said. 

“Just—don’t want’cha to be uncomfortable,” Daryl said. “Exhausted tomorrow.” 

Carol smiled to herself. She refrained from paying him the compliment that came to mind. It might be too much for him at the moment.

“Concerns for my well-being aside,” Carol said, “and knowing that I won’t be offended, would you rather I leave?” 

“No,” Daryl said. He hesitated a moment. “I like the company.”

Carol smiled to herself. Her stomach tightened in an unfamiliar way. 

“Would you rather—I speak to Merle tomorrow about…putting you with someone else? Switching up pairs?” 

“No,” Daryl said quickly. “I mean—unless you wanna be with someone else.” 

“No,” Carol said. “I like the company. I mean—I like your company.” 

Carol had to admit that it felt like a risky thing to say. It was simple and, for the most part, it was an innocent statement, but it felt almost monumental to her. Her heart thundered in her chest and she held her breath, nervous for Daryl’s reaction. She felt like he took forever to respond, though, realistically, she knew it was probably only moments. 

“Me too,” Daryl offered. “I like your company, too.” 

If Daryl heard her release of breath, or even the thundering of her heart, he didn’t say anything. Carol relaxed, settling in for the next few hours that lay in front of them.

“Maybe,” she said, “that’s why Merle assigned us to pairs.”


	11. Chapter 11

AN: There’s a bit of time jump that’s explained here as we’re progressing forward a little. 

I hope you enjoy! Please let me know what you think! 

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Days passed quickly. Too quickly to bother keeping track of their passage. Easily they slipped by. Morning, afternoon, dusk, and then the long nights. 

Weeks passed in a kind of dreamful state where Mulder wasn’t sure if anybody registered that time was actually slipping by them. They all lived in a strange world, at the moment, where reality and fantasy seemed to blur oddly and completely enough that nobody could tell the difference.

They worked with passion on their little camp—all of them. Water was hauled, boiled, and stored in the few containers they had. Meat was hunted, cleaned, and cooked. Ashes were turned into soap for scrubbing. Even skins were being scraped and cleaned for the winter that would come. They lived off the meat that was hunted, fish that were caught, the food that everyone had contributed, and nuts, berries, and roots that the ground offered up.

They chopped wood, hauled wood, stacked wood, and tended fires. They darned clothes with Carol’s sewing basket and tried to make the best out of what they had—talking about venturing away from their camp in search of supplies in the cities, but almost terrified to do so.

They put down Walkers that wandered too close to their camp and they burned their corpses some distance off. Nearly every day offered over at least one rotted corpse to be burned like they were part of some strange belief system that required them to make regular sacrifices to some unnamed gods or goddesses.

They ate their meals around campfires and a strange sort of unspoken, and largely unanalyzed, comradery began to grow between them all. 

And, slowly, something happened as they became something like family—all of them banded together for survival.

Beyond that, maybe it was a kind of acceptance, or maybe it was simply the slow and gentle releasing of reality that took place, but it started to feel as if the here and now was all that was real and, perhaps, all that had ever been real. The before was so distant that it seemed fuzzy and hard to remember—like it had been a dream and only the strange and somewhat pioneer-like existence they now knew was real.

And they slept deeply at night, because bodies and minds exhausted from survival required rest.

Mulder was surprised, then, when he found himself inexplicably awake at a time when he could sense that he shouldn’t be awake. 

It was dark—too dark to start getting ready for the morning. And they weren’t on watch, so he couldn’t blame his waking on someone coming to stick their head in the tent and announce that it was time to switch places. 

Mulder stirred in the sleeping bag and tried to figure out what it was that had woken him. He listened in the darkness for the now familiar sounds of his nights—Scully’s breathing, and soft snoring, next to him as she slept in her sleeping bag. Immediately, his stomach clenched. He realized what was wrong. The tent was too quiet.

“Scully?” He spoke into the darkness, fighting the strange sense of almost-nausea that rose up in him. “Scully?” He repeated, raising his voice a little when she didn’t tell him to shut up or grumble about being woken up before she had to help with breakfast. 

A feeling of something akin to dread rose up in Mulder. It felt like it came from somewhere deep inside him—something primal, even, that he’d kept buried for some time.

Without hesitation, he was out of his sleeping bag and his hand curled around the handle of his knife—the location of which he could find with his eyes closed. He felt for Scully’s knife. It was gone. At least, wherever she was, she’d gone with a weapon. Mulder took a few moments to pull pants and shoes on—shoes that were nearly worn through from the daily abuse they took, especially since they’d never been designed to endure abuse—and slipped out of the tent without anything else.

He no longer felt like he needed a light. His feet knew the camp. He’d stumbled, and tripped, often enough that, as a matter of survival, his brain had memorized the landscape. 

The full moon almost seemed as bright as the sun, too, and it practically lit up the camp.

At some distance, he could hear the sound of Dale talking—keeping Glenn entertained as the two of them kept watch for Walkers. He turned his feet immediately away from that direction, somehow sure that Scully wouldn’t be with them. He walked toward the quarries, filled with water, and found her there. 

Something inside him had known that he would find her there.

He stopped his approach, as soon as he saw her, and watched her for a moment. He felt like he could practically see her as clearly as if it were daylight. She was sitting on the edge of the quarry with her feet in the cold water. She was staring out over the water. She looked almost like a mermaid or some other mythical creature—the romanticized, beautiful kind, and not the stuff of legends that was also slightly terrifying. Of course, Mulder thought with amusement, there was something about Scully that did somewhat terrify him, at least a little.

More than anything, Mulder was struck, in that moment, by the fact that she looked like she belonged there, which wasn’t something he could have said when they’d first arrived. He’d heard, before, that Nature took back what was hers. She reclaimed everything, in its time, that belonged to her.

Perhaps, to some degree, she had reclaimed Scully.

Maybe, in some way, she’d started to reclaim them all.

Mulder approached Scully slowly and as quietly as he could. He was aware of his shoes—or what was left of them, since they were coming apart—scuffling on the hard dirt and rocks beneath his feet. He was disrupting her sanctuary, but she didn’t turn to look at him. He sat down beside her, invading her space without invitation or request for an invitation. 

“You left. I couldn’t sleep,” he said, finally, unable to stand the silence too much longer.

“I had a dream,” Scully said.

“Bad one?” 

“I don’t know if any of them or bad or good anymore, Mulder. It was about my mother.” 

“Want to talk about it?” 

Scully made a sound, almost like a snort.

“She was talking to me,” Scully said. “Sitting at the kitchen table. Just—a normal conversation. Maybe that’s what was so strange about it.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Nothing’s normal anymore, Mulder. It’s like—we walked into an X-File and we never walked back out again. The whole world is a case that we can’t solve. I woke up and I thought—I miss my mother. And then I thought, she’s probably dead, Mulder.” 

Mulder’s stomach felt like it bottomed out. The reality was that Scully’s mother—her family—was probably dead. His family was dead, too. As far as they knew, this camp was the last piece of life left on the planet. Of course, they wanted to believe that there were pockets of civilization and life all around them, but believing in the existence of other living human beings, at this moment, was harder for Mulder than believing in anything else had ever been.

He put an arm around Scully. He didn’t have to try to coax her to lean into him. She came, practically curling into him. He rubbed his hand over her skin. She was wearing the only pair of pajamas she had. They were light, and much of her skin was bare. Like Mulder, she wasn’t dressed to reflect the fact that a hint of autumn was settling firmly around them.

“She’s probably alive, Scully,” Mulder said. His words sounded empty, and he knew that. “It probably wasn’t as bad there. They probably had a real safe haven set up for everyone.” 

“You don’t really believe that,” Scully said.

“I want to believe it,” Mulder said. He moved his body a little closer to hers. She responded by resting her head against him. “Don’t you? Come on, Scully—you can’t be the skeptic forever. You’re telling me that you’ve accepted the existence of Walkers, but you can’t believe that the government set up something to take care of our families?” 

Scully sat up and looked at him. Thanks to the brightness of the moon, he could see her, even if he couldn’t make out every tiny feature of her face.

“We see Walkers every day, Mulder,” Scully said. “I couldn’t deny them if I wanted to. I don’t know how the virus works, exactly, but I know it’s a virus. Viruses. Mutations. Illness. Plague. That’s science. Even if I can’t understand it, I can believe it. But the benevolence of the federal government, Mulder?” 

Mulder laughed, and Scully smiled at him—just barely. Just enough for him to see it as the moonlight, maybe, caught her teeth or her eyes just right.

“Some things are too far-fetched, even for me,” Mulder offered. She continued to stare at him a moment. Something inside him twitched. Tightened. He thought the same thing he’d thought what felt like a thousand times. 

If he acted on it, and she rejected him, then it could be awkward—beyond awkward—in a world that, as far as they knew, consisted of exactly nine living human beings. 

But if he didn’t act on it, he’d never know.

Mulder touched her chin. She didn’t pull away. She didn’t flinch. She continued to look at him. He leaned his face toward hers and she stood her ground. He let his lips brush hers gently, not daring at first to try for more. He felt her breath on his lips as she parted hers slightly. In contrast to the cool air that seeped into bare skin, her lips were warm. He leaned just a touch more. He connected their lips a little more securely, and she leaned forward, pushing herself upward on the hard ground, to give her blessing, perhaps, for a deeper kiss to follow.

And it seemed like the most natural thing that could happen.

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“Get off it, Merle!” Andrea demanded, crashing through the trees and underbrush. “Shit—now I know how dogs feel when they’re in heat.” 

Merle laughed to himself. He could hear a hint of laughter in her tone.

He liked her. He couldn’t help it. He tried to fight it at first, but then he figured why the hell should he bother? After all, it wasn’t like there were too many choices at the end of the world. It wasn’t like they were both entertaining a lifetime supply of suitors. 

It didn’t take some kind of university scholar to know that nature tended to put people in twos whenever possible—no matter what form those pairs may take. Humans were animals. They were social animals. They would be driven to pair up. Even the most solitary of the creatures needed some kind of companionship. And, in the case of those that were wired in such a way, there was a natural urge to mate. 

It was only human—the animal in them behaving as nature intended.

And any blind man could have recognized the sniffing around that was taking place at the camp. 

Daryl was something like a young buck in his first rut. He clearly knew what he wanted, but he seemed confused about how to get there. Still, there was a certain quality of rubbing his antlers around the camp and showing them off, on occasion, to warn off anybody else from the doe on which he’d set his sights. His little doe—and she was a doe-eyed little thing that he’d chosen—seemed content to be as patient as he needed her to be. And when he pawed the ground and showed off—nearly fighting Merle to be the one to bring home the most meat and the best kills—she praised him and petted him between his points, content to wait him out. Merle was sure that, eventually, they’d work it out and get it together enough for nature to take her course. For the time being, though, he was allowing them their dance before he stepped in to try to steer his poor, confused brother in the right direction to get his little doe topped for once and for all.

Merle wondered if, on the other side of camp, it wasn’t the doe that was slowing things down—running away whenever Mulder got too close. She was a little firecracker—bold as anything in some ways, but clearly timid in others. Mulder obviously respected her shyness, though, and had some patience with her. He was clear and confident in his pursuit, even if he was slow and deliberate about it. There was kissing and teasing enough to turn the stomach if one had a weak countenance and happened to stumble across some private moment shared while taking care of a chore. 

Still, every man had his way of going about things, and the approach had to be different for just about every woman since, by the same token, every woman was a different animal.

Merle believed in being direct about things. He believed, too, that Andrea was a direct sort of woman.

Whether it was the moon, the threat of cold coming—for which they would soon have to seriously begin preparing since their circumstances didn’t seem likely to change, or some genuine rut settling over all of them as they accepted their lives as something not quite as civilized as they’d once believed themselves to be, Merle was starting to feel, very strongly, the stirring and almost desperate urge to mate. 

He’d expressed as much to the blonde when they’d just gotten out of earshot of the camp—headed for where they’d found the wild persimmons growing and, not too far beyond that, the few apple trees with their fruit that, although a little harder than desirable, was sweet and desirable.

He was almost ready to promise her anything she wanted in exchange for just a little taste of what he knew she had to offer. If that hadn’t been the case, he wouldn’t have nearly broken his neck grabbing buckets and dragging her out of camp to go fruit picking when he could have found a more interesting chore to occupy his afternoon.

There were many more interesting chores to be had around camp but, at the moment, there were not more interesting chore partners to be found.

“If you in heat, Sugar,” Merle offered, “Ole Merle can help you out. Get you some sweet relief.”

“You’re a pig, Merle,” Andrea called over her shoulder. 

She could say what she wanted, but Merle heard the smile in her voice. He saw, too, the slightly more exaggerated sway of her hips as she walked in front of him with her bucket swinging in her hand. He licked his lips.

“You ain’t cravin’ bacon by any chance, are you, Sweet Cheeks?” 

“Get off it, Merle,” Andrea said again.

“I’d rather get you off,” he offered. “That what you worried about? Think I won’t—do you right? Why don’t’cha give me a chance to prove it to you? Hmmm—let me prove to you how right I can do you?” 

“Stop it, Merle,” Andrea said. Merle detected just a hint less amusement and a touch more sincerity in her words. He laughed to himself. She was beginning to prickle a bit under the strain of his insistence.

“Alright,” he said. “But—just so you know, Sugar, the offer still stands if you should find you got an itch you need a lil’ help scratchin’. I’m real good with my hands and better with everything else.” 

Merle was a little more direct, maybe, than the others around him. Andrea, though, seemed like a woman who responded to directness. Of course, she was also the kind of woman who needed to feel a certain amount of security in the fact that she’d come to things herself. 

Merle could give her a little time and a little space. After all, it wasn’t like they didn’t seem to have suddenly stumbled onto an abundance of both.


	12. Chapter 12

AN: Here we are, another chapter. I posted one yesterday, so if you missed it, please make sure you go back and read it.

I’m going to say, to everyone who doesn’t “know” Merle, that you should assume there’s just a permanent “Merle warning” everywhere. LOL

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

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“This is good. Real good,” Daryl said, sincerely, as he came up from air while swallowing down the best rendition of baked apples that Carol was capable of creating with what she had.

The compliment warmed her body and settled low in her belly—where most of Daryl’s compliments burned as long as they didn’t find a way to settle even further south. 

At first, Carol had assumed her reaction to Daryl’s praise of her food was the slow untangling of the insecurities planted by Ed. When she’d been married to him, he’d told her that she couldn’t cook. Everything was wrong, and he would count her failures over nearly every plate that was served to him. Even the praise she received for the few things she cooked for her job hadn’t entirely erased the insecurity he’d caused, and she’d always found it easy to pretend that any nice thing that was said to her wasn’t given because she earned it but, rather, because the speaker was simply a kind person.

She pretended to be confident in her abilities—having read somewhere that faking it would make her feel it, eventually—but true confidence was still somewhat in its budding stages thanks to the havoc that Ed had wreaked during their marriage. 

Still, in the—how long had they been there? Months? In the time that she’d been cooking for the camp, she’d become something of the head chef. She had as many hands as were on offer for help, but most of the responsibility fell to her. Everyone praised her cooking, but she assumed that their praise was often given not to anger the cook on which they relied. Perfect or not, at least she was putting food in their bellies.

Daryl’s praise, though, always seemed, somehow, more sincere. Maybe it was because he rarely praised anyone or anything. Maybe it was because of the tone of voice he used when he gave it to her—such simple words, but she could hear that he meant them. Maybe it was because he bolted his food like he was afraid someone might take it from him.

Of course, Carol could admit that he probably bolted his food because pickings were slim and rations were slowly shrinking. 

Looking around the fire at the people that she couldn’t help but begin to think of as her family—the only people she had left in the world and, honestly, some of the best she’d ever met—Carol noticed that they were all looking thinner. Clothes hung loosely, and some bones were more pronounced than they’d been when she’d first met everyone. It was sometimes hard to stretch food for nine people, especially when she didn’t know how long she would magically need to keep their canned and dry rations going. There was no end in sight to this, and winter was coming. Their foraging would yield even less soon.

They worked hard. They burned calories. They ate what she served with gusto—a fancy word, these days, for starvation, perhaps. Meat was the only thing they sometimes had in abundance. And, on the nights when there was far more meat than they would casually eat in the time before it spoiled, Carol would set the meat out for a feast and they would tear at it like wolves—mouths and hands dripping with juice—until she could almost imagine that she could hear low-pitched growls emitting from the throats of her newly-forming family.

She was a master at stretching food—making it go longer than some might even imagine possible—thanks to the fact that Ed had given her a very strict, and often unfair, allowance when they’d been married. He’d had champagne taste and he’d given her a tap water budget with which to work. 

For her own part, Carol didn’t complain about their food. She did the same thing she’d learned to do when she was married to Ed. She smiled and served the food—as fairly as possible, this time—and then she’d fill up on water or broth as best she could. She always pretended to be full as soon as she saw Sophia nearing the end of her plate, and she forced her leftovers on her growing daughter to be sure that she got enough. 

“Thank you,” Carol said, smiling at Daryl. A quick smile flitted across his lips and he looked away, almost like he was embarrassed and needed nothing more than to study his quickly emptying plate. There was something shy about Daryl. The more she got to know him, the more she realized that what she once might have mistaken for aloofness, or even disdain, was something else entirely. Even his embarrassed glancing away made Carol’s heart beat a little faster and her belly feel inexplicably warm again.

She sucked in a breath and took in the faces of everyone else around her—all of whom she was coming to understand on a new level entirely.

“I could do a lot more with—more ingredients. Maybe some extra spices. I’m running low. And the supplies…I’m doing my best to stretch them. But I don’t know how many more months we’ll get out of them.” 

Carol didn’t hesitate in directing her statement toward Merle. The group hadn’t exactly had some kind of official vote, but they naturally deferred to him as their leader. Everything about their situation might not be perfect, but Merle had gotten them here, and he made decisions every day that kept them alive. That was more than they could say for the corpses they put down and burned on a daily basis.

He considered Carol’s words with a hum and a sigh before he lit a cigarette he’d rolled with phone book paper and some kind of plant that he’d found nearby in the woods—one he claimed was a good enough fill-in for tobacco when he was lacking the real thing.

“We need more’n that,” he said. “Need food. Clothes. Shoes. Blankets. Better tents. We need just about every damn thing.”

“We could go to Atlanta,” Glenn offered. “Outlet stores and downtown? Everything we could want would be there. We can take what we want now.” 

“Atlanta’s dangerous,” Scully said.

Carol’s chest tugged a little with the woman’s tone of voice. Scully was one of them that had been most shaken by the reality of the world around them. It was a lot for anyone to face and to digest. Scully seemed to have dealt with much of it by simply throwing herself entirely into the camp and the life they were building—almost as if she’d simply chosen to push accepting their whole reality to the side entirely.

“Overrun with Walkers,” Merle agreed, not missing a beat. “Without a doubt. But—I doubt Uncle Sam’s still hangin’ around after all this time, napalmin’ the hell outta the place. Ain’t nothin’ but fuckin’ corpses by now.” 

“A city full of Walkers isn’t exactly Disneyland,” Mulder said.

“What we need is a plan,” Merle said. “Know the best place to come into the city. Best place to come out. Make sure we ain’t wastin’ time trippin’ over ourselves. Go in and get what the hell we need, get the hell out.”

“Hard to make that plan when we don’t know what we’re dealing with,” Daryl said.

“I know Atlanta pretty well,” Glenn offered. “I used to deliver pizzas there. We had this whole—get it on time or it’s free thing going on. The only catch was it came out of our pay if we didn’t get a pizza where it was going on time. I learned to get around Atlanta pretty quickly. I can navigate the city with my eyes closed.”

“But you don’t know what condition it’s in,” Dale said. “A lot’s changed since I picked you up on the highway.” 

“I can go down there,” Glenn said. “Check it out. Scout it, I guess. I can come back and tell you what I saw. We’ll make a plan. I can grab what I can while I’m down there—some food, at least.”

“You want to go alone?” Scully asked. Carol saw the woman perk up. She was clearly uncomfortable with leaving camp, and she had been since she’d nearly been attacked by a Walker, but she was even more uncomfortable with the idea of sending Glenn down to Atlanta by himself. 

“You goin’ with him, Firecracker?” Merle asked with a laugh.

“He can’t go into a situation like that alone,” Scully said. “You don’t go into a dangerous situation without backup.”

“I’m fast. I’d be faster on my own,” Glenn argued.

“I’m fast, if fast is all we’re looking for,” Scully argued back.

“Scully’s right,” Merle said. “You won’t go alone. We’ll get a small team together for an in and out mission. Scout the place first. We’ll go back later, as a larger group, and clean out what we can.” 

Carol couldn’t help but notice the finality behind the words. Maybe everyone else heard it, too. Nobody argued. Nobody protested. They simply accepted what Merle said. More than likely, he’d decide on the group that would go, and he’d let them know—maybe even over breakfast—who was going and when they’d venture out of the camp to see what was left of the world beyond their little safe haven.

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Merle lit a rabbit tobacco cigarette and inhaled lightly. If he had something better than the phonebook pages to roll it with, it wouldn’t burn his throat like hellfire. As it stood, he had to smoke more gingerly than he was accustomed to smoking just to keep from scorching his insides.

On his side of the tent, Daryl sat reading a book by lamplight that was nearly turned to a rag for how many times it had changed hands throughout the camp. All the books that they had—the ones that could be read, since nobody missed the phone books that had seemed to be tucked here and there in all the vehicles—had been read by everyone.

“I got somethin’ to ask you about, brother,” Merle mused. Daryl looked up from his book, surprised that Merle was speaking. He hummed in question. Merle laughed to himself. “I’ma start it with—I ain’t fuckin’ with you, and I ain’t jerkin’ you around. Mean this. Sincere. Just—sort of dawned on me that…well…you always been the sort of solitary type and, really, it’s been me that’s been responsible for showin’ you the ropes an’ all since you was a scrawny ass lil’ kid.”

“You goin’ somewhere, Merle?” Daryl asked.

Merle laughed to himself.

“I don’t mean bullshit made up to…fit in,” Merle said. “I mean the damn truth, Daryl. You ever—had you a good piece?” 

“Of?” 

“Cake,” Merle said. He rolled his eyes at Daryl. “Pussy, brother.” 

“Shut up, Merle.” 

Merle swallowed his laughter and the fact that he nearly choked on the harsh smoke he inhaled.

“Reckon I got my answer,” he said. “I told you—I ain’t here to yank you around, brother. Complete fuckin’ opposite of that.”

“Can we not talk about this?” 

“I think we got to—we ain’t before. And we should have. I mean it.”

“You expect me to believe you wantin’ to just have some kinda heart to heart right now?” 

“Maybe I oughta said it some time ago,” Merle said. “Insteada assumin’. You know what the hell they say about that shit. You are wired that way, ain’t you, brother? I mean—I ain’t readin’ it wrong that…you been sniffin’ around after that mousy little thing?” 

Daryl frowned deeply at him. Merle nodded his head. He didn’t need too many verbal responses from Daryl to have a conversation. He’d been taking care of him since he was in diapers, really. He knew his ways, by now. 

“Ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of, boy. Waitin’ for what you want.” 

“Don’t sound like you,” Daryl said bluntly. Merle laughed.

“Maybe it don’t, but I’m just talkin’ to you. Hell—if I ain’t wrong, and I usually ain’t about these things—that filly’s wired an’ willin’, Daryl. Wouldn’t nobody even have to hold her bridle.” 

“Fuck off, Merle,” Daryl warned. Merle could feel the warning in his words. It wasn’t the conversation that made him bristle as much as it was mention of the little woman in someone else’s mouth. 

“She’s got you good, don’t she?” Merle mused. “She prob’ly ain’t even meant to set the hook that deep. Calm down, Daryl. Ain’t nobody messin’ with her. You don’t gotta go pissin’ on her leg to let people know you got intentions. I’m just wonderin’ if you don’t need your old brother to nudge you toward fulfillin’ them intentions.” 

Daryl stared at him from under a heavy pout.

“You just wantin’ a taste of it, or…you wantin’ it long term? Because—she comes with that kid. Package deal. It’s a lot to get into if you ain’t sure.” 

“I like Sophia,” Daryl grumbled.

“You would be the family type,” Merle mused. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that,” he offered quickly when he saw Daryl bow up a little. “You—know the basics? I mean…the ins and the outs of it, right?” 

He made a gesture to with his words and Daryl grimaced at him. Merle couldn’t help but find his brother’s expression of disgust amusing. 

“Asshole. I’m not a fuckin’ idiot,” Daryl growled.

“Didn’t think you were,” Merle said. “Hell—Daryl—you want it and she’s willin’. She ain’t gonna buck you off if you try to get it—I don’t think. And I know there ain’t no situation of dealin’ with no cherry besides your own, so you ain’t tryin’ to get over that mountain and talk her out of it like I’m thinkin’ some damn people around here might be tryin’ to do. You oughta just—put it out there, boy. But the best advice I’d give you, as someone whose been doin’ this a long damn time is…wetter is better. Remember that shit. Do her good.”

“Fuck, Merle.” 

“I’m serious, brother. You mess around with her ‘til that shit’s sloppy wet. Spit on it, yourself, if it ain’t. If she needs a lil’ help. She’ll thank you for it later.” 

“That all the hell you gotta say? Can we—just stop talkin’ about it?” Daryl asked.

Merle laughed to himself.

“Just—maybe just one more thing,” Merle said. “Tell her, brother. I don’t think she’ll run you off. She ain’t the type. Better she knows up front. Before you mount up. And—for fuck’s sake, Daryl. Jerk off a couple times ‘fore you lay it out there for her. At least give her a shot at more’n sixty seconds to decide if she likes that shit.” 

“You done?” Daryl asked.

“I’m done,” Merle said. “Just—don’t wait too long. Winter’s gonna be cold this year. I’m bettin’ you’d rather be sharin’ a tent with Mouse than with me.” 

“And kickin’ Andrea’s ass out in the cold?” 

Merle laughed to himself.

“Don’t you worry about her, brother. I’ll make sure she don’t freeze to death.” 

“Ain’t you a good person.” 

“A damn humanitarian is what I am, brother. A—damn preacher of peace an’ pussy at the end of the world.”


	13. Chapter 13

AN: Here we are, another chapter here. I posted one yesterday, and another this morning, so please don’t miss those two!

I hope you enjoy! Please let me know what you think! 

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Merle was tired before the damn run even started.

He’d been accused of sexism and, though he wasn’t denying that he had potential for every kind of -ism probably known to man, his reasonings for arguing that all the women stay behind at the camp hadn’t been sexist—at least not intentionally. He didn’t doubt that, weapon in hand, any of them could fare as well as anybody else, but he didn’t particularly want to put them in the way of trouble when they didn’t know what they were walking into. Carol had a kid. She was also a damn good cook with little more than shit to work with. Scully was a doctor and Merle didn’t relish the thought of the last living medical doctor in the world getting torn apart by one of those freaks just because they hadn’t yet figured out what they were dealing with in Atlanta. And Andrea? Well—Merle had his own personal reasons for wanting to keep the blonde alive, and he didn’t owe it to everyone to explain his thoughts about every single thing.

There had been some belly aching and complaining, though, and Merle had finally agreed to take Scully along because she seemed the most geared up to argue with him that her status as FBI made her better equipped to brave whatever the hell was waiting for them in Atlanta. 

He’d already asked her if she intended to show the Walkers her badge, but he’d agreed that she could go along if it made her happy. Now, of course, that meant he was going to have to keep an extra careful watch over her because there was no damn way he was sacrificing a doctor they were guaranteed to need at some point to be the lunch of one of these undead assholes.

With Scully, Glenn, and Daryl, Merle had headed down to Atlanta. They’d taken one car, and they intended to find and hotwire a truck while they were in the city. They were bringing back as much as possible in one trip so that they didn’t just waste their time getting the lay of the land.

They left the car outside the city where they could find it easily, and each of them carried an empty bag for supplies, a bladed weapon, and, in the case of Merle and Daryl, a bow of choice and a quiver of arrows. If good fortune offered them up more tools and weapons, Merle would be glad to take those, too, among all the other goods they needed to find.

The first thing they’d realized was that Atlanta was a wasteland unlike even what they’d imagined it might be. It stank of death and decay, and the scent was strong enough that Scully and Glenn both parted company with their breakfast not too far into the city. There were no signs of life. The city belonged to the dead—great gobs of Dead. 

There were Walkers roaming everywhere, aimlessly, but there were also mostly rotted bodies that, for one reason or another, weren’t roaming. Something had stopped them. Scully had tried to stop to examine those bodies once or twice, but Merle had dragged her away with the insistence that they didn’t have time to waste to satisfy curiosity, and it didn’t matter anyway. 

They had to move quickly and they had to move quietly. 

The first place they stopped was a grocery. Merle had been attracted to it because he’d seen what he wanted most of all outside the store—delivery trucks. 

The world had stopped, it seemed, in the middle of a breath. 

The truck would have been easy enough to hotwire, but there wasn’t any need. Whoever had been making the delivery had dropped the keys on the ground—as simple as that. They weren’t three feet from the truck, and the delivery man was long gone. Maybe he’d been napalmed. Maybe he’d been shot by one of the soldiers that had come to town in the armored tanks that now sat unoccupied and still in the warzone that had become Atlanta in its final days.

It didn’t matter what had happened to him. He was gone, now, and probably walking somewhere in the city with the other nameless and faceless freaks.

They’d immediately gone to work emptying shelves, inside the grocery, of dried goods and canned goods. They carried everything out to fill the back of the truck, intending to take everything they could. The smell of rotted food and decaying corpses—thanks to the fact that some people had shut themselves in the grocery and chosen to kill themselves there rather than facing what the hell was coming for them—had probably been enough to deter most looters. The store was decently stocked, all things considered, and the abundance of food lifted Merle’s spirits a little as he worried over what the coming cold would mean for their group.

He might’ve been content to simply load the truck with the contents of the one store and call it a day of good luck, but he’d been snatched out of his happiness by the sight of Scully running as fast as her short ass little legs would carry her out the front door of the store. She didn’t stop running once she hit the pavement, and Merle took off after her—neither of them telling Daryl or Glenn where they were going or why.

“The fuck are you doin’, Firecracker?!” Merle called after the woman, reminding himself that he didn’t believe in violence against women—not even if he wanted to choke her for losing her fucking mind.

Her shoes pounded on the pavement. She hadn’t lied. She was fast. She was faster than Merle—there was no doubt about that.

“Convenience store!” She called back, panting a little with exertion. She pointed toward the store in question. 

“You gonna tell me what the fuck we runnin’ like our asses is on fire for?” Merle spat at her. 

“They can’t catch us if we’re fast,” she panted.

Merle technically couldn’t argue with her—partially because she was right, and partially because he lacked the breath to do so. When she reached her destination, she yanked the door open and, finding that it didn’t resist, she darted inside.

“Crazy bitch,” Merle spat after her, entering the building a couple of minutes after her. 

He caught her just inside and spun her around, accidentally slamming her a little harder than he meant to against a wall. She looked at him with wide, terrified eyes and a mouth open in surprise. Her expression calmed him down, and he loosened his hold on her.

“First—you don’t go fuckin’ runnin’ off no more. Never. You hear me? Somethin’ coulda torn your ass apart. It don’t take but a second. Second—you don’t go runnin’ into a buildin’ like that never again. What if this place woulda been full of them things just waitin’ on you?” 

“Sorry,” she panted.

He felt, too, like she meant it.

He let go of her. He set his jaw. He swallowed down gulps of air. 

“Me too,” he offered, his breathing slowly returning to normal. “Scared me—that’s all. You ain’t hurt?” 

She shook her head, but she didn’t move until she was sure that he’d calmed. He looked around. “The hell you after, anyway, now that we here?” 

She slipped over to the rack of tourist supplies. 

“Map,” she said. “Tourist maps. Everything in the city’s probably marked out. We’ll know where to find camping gear. Clothes. We’re starving, but—we’re cold, too. I’d give just about anything for a good blanket.” 

Merle laughed to himself, his chest loosening as he relaxed and accepted that they weren’t dead, and there were no Walkers around them. Behind the counter, he pulled a carton of cigarettes and quickly helped himself to a smoke from the pack.

“Might as well clear this place out while we’re goin’,” he mused. “You done good. If I can find it—I’ma get you that blanket. But—I think you got only your own ass to blame if you sleepin’ cold. I’m sure your pal, Mulder, can think of a couple ways to knock the chill outta that tent.”

She gave him a look that she clearly intended to freeze ice. But Merle saw it melt as she turned away—heading toward something she’d spotted on the shelves they’d clear—and he caught a hint of her smile. He laughed to himself, and took a drag on his cigarette. Glancing outside, he caught sight of Daryl and Glenn walking toward the door. They’d chosen to cover ground at a much slower pace, but they’d clearly seen where Merle and Scully had gone.

Merle jumped when he heard Scully’s surprised squeak—a sound almost choked off—and the crash deep within the shelves of the store. He ran around the counter as quickly as he could, headed for the sound, but he didn’t have far to go. 

The black man with his arm around Scully’s throat and his handgun to her temple brought her to meet Merle.

And two steps behind him was a half-crazed black woman with an axe.

Merle’s stomach dropped down between his feet. 

“This is ours, and it’s time for you to go now,” the woman said. Merle held up his hands in surrender.

“Fine,” he said. “Fine—you got it. This store’s yours. We were trespassin’ on your space, clearly. Didn’t see your sign outside markin’ it claimed.” 

“Go!” The woman barked, stepping one step closer.

Merle nodded.

“Just as soon as I get my…” he hesitated. He didn’t know what to call Scully. She was technically nothing to him—no blood relation, and certainly not his woman. Yet, honestly, she felt like more than a friend. She was like family. More family, really, than the family he’d known before all this shit. They were working together to survive this, and he owed her a blanket. His stomach rolled to see the fear in her eyes. His stomach rolled at the thought of the man squeezing the trigger. “Family,” he said. “Gimme Scully back. Let go of her. We’ll leave. You got my word on that shit. You won’t get no trouble from us.”

The man holding Scully suddenly howled. He staggered backward, nearly colliding with the woman wielding the axe. Merle didn’t know what happened. It was too fast for his brain to register it. His arm shot out and he snatched Scully, pulling her against him. Immediately, he swung his crossbow over his shoulder and loaded it before the woman with the axe or the man could react.

The man was cussing, spitting profanity, and it didn’t take long to figure out why.

The bolt was lodged in his arm, but it wouldn’t be fatal—not if infection didn’t set in.

“Next one goes through your head, asshole,” Daryl growled from behind Merle. “Touch her again. I fuckin’ dare you.” 

“Are you crazy?!” The axe woman yelled. 

“Son of a bitch! It’s not even loaded—son of a bitch!” The man howled, clearly unsure of what to do about his arm as he flapped around in his space.

“You shot him!” 

“What the hell are you doin’ threatenin’ people with an unloaded gun?” Daryl asked.

“It’s been enough to scare them off so far!” The axe woman yelled. 

“You fuckin’ shot me! He shot me!” 

“It’s OK,” Scully said, pulling away from Merle’s side. “I’m a doctor. I can help.” 

“What the hell is goin’ on here?” Merle asked. 

“There’s got to be a first aid area,” Scully said. “I’m going to need some bandages. Alcohol. Hand sanitizer. I’ll push the arrow through and pack the wound. Merle? I might need you to—hold him.” 

“Are you crazy? He was just about to shoot you in the head!” 

“It wasn’t loaded.”

“You didn’t fuckin’ know that!” 

“The sooner I get this packed, the sooner we can get the rest of our stuff and get out of here and get back to camp, where it’s safe, Merle,” Scully said. She sounded authoritative, but then she softened and smiled at him. “I still—want that blanket.” 

Merle sighed.

“Fine,” he said. “But—I take back what the hell I said. This store ain’t fuckin’ off limits now. We’re takin’ what the hell we want for our fuckin’ trouble. And put that fuckin’ axe down. You’re makin’ me nervous. And when I get nervous, I got a tendency to shoot people.” 

The woman lowered the axe to the floor without argument or hesitation.

“If you really want a blanket,” the woman said, “I can show you a safe way to get to some of the other stores.” 

“Yeah?” Merle asked, wrestling the man with the injured arm as Glenn brought Scully supplies and she started to work. The man, clearly not prepared for what was about to happen to him, started to yell about his displeasure with Scully’s plans. “Find somethin’ to stuff in his mouth, will you?” Merle directed to Glenn who darted off for something else among the shelves.

“It’s OK,” the woman cooed, trying to comfort the man who was clearly terrified of what was to come. Merle watched as Scully doused her hands in hand sanitizer and rubbing alcohol—cleaning them the best she could with what she had. The man howled and slapped at her, when she doused his injured arm in the alcohol, and she absorbed the impact of his one hit without complaint. The blood that appeared on her lip said that the slap had been solid enough. Merle apologized and tightened his hold on the man. “It’s OK—sweetheart…” the woman cooed again.

“Why should we trust you?” Daryl asked, walking a circle around the whole chaotic scene. “After you tried to kill Scully.” 

“You’re the first people we’ve seen besides the raiders in months,” the woman said. 

“Raiders?” 

“The come in waves. Four or five. Take what they want. Kill people. There used to be more of us. The only way to survive is to show them you’re not scared of them. The city isn’t safe.” 

“Then why the hell stay here?” Merle asked.

“Not everybody knows where to go. How to survive. I grew up in Atlanta. But—you say you’ve got a camp?” 

“No,” Merle said. 

“I’m Jacqui,” she offered. “He’s Theodore. T-Dog. T. We haven’t known what to do, exactly, but we know Atlanta. What’s left of it. I used to work with the City Planning Commission. We can help you get what you want. What you need.” 

“And in exchange?” 

“You take us with you,” Jacqui said.

“Oh hell, no,” Merle growled. “We gonna have a hard enough time feedin’ the mouths we got through the fuckin’ winter without takin’ on Mr. Hold His Gun Fuckin’ Cockeyed Like Some Kinda Fuckin’ Thug and Atilla the Axe Bearin’ Hun!” 

Merle wrestled against the man who, his mouth stuffed full of socks, because that was what Glenn had found and crammed in there, was clearly not having the best day of his life. Scully, for her part, was focused and not at all bothered by the work of getting the bolt out of his arm and the wound dressed.

“There’s strength in numbers, Merle,” Glenn offered. “And—who’s to say that any of us wouldn’t have acted the same way if someone came up on us and surprised us?” 

“Too many mouths to feed,” Merle said. “And not enough tents as it is. They’d be sleepin’ with their asses in the cold. We ain’t got shit to spare.” 

“I can show you where to get more food,” Jacqui said. She smiled at Merle. “And I know a great outdoor supply store for the savvy outdoorsman like yourself.” 

“Daryl?” Merle asked, looking toward his brother—the last one that might back him up on leaving the two crazy ass new people behind.

Daryl simply shrugged his shoulders. 

“We could always use a few more hands,” he said. “And—it sounds like she knows where to find everything.”


	14. Chapter 14

AN: Here we are, another chapter here. 

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

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Daryl carried the camping lantern with him, leaving the tent after changing into clean clothes following a bath. It was dark. The moon was little more than a sliver, and it offered no real light. When Daryl got out to the truck where they normally sat to keep watch, he found that Carol was already there, sitting on the tailgate. She gave him a pretty smile when the lamplight flickered across her features. 

“You got out here fast,” Daryl commented, anxious to find something to say to her to start some conversation between them.

“Mama’s privilege,” Carol said. “I took my bath early with Sophia.” 

Daryl crawled up onto the tailgate with Carol and put the lamp behind them in the truck bed so that it would provide them with light without getting in their way or being easy to knock over with some accidental stray movement of a hand or arm.

“Sorry about—bringin’ you back extra mouths to feed and all,” Daryl said. 

“I’m just glad nobody got hurt,” Carol said. “Well—except the guy you shot. T-Dog?” 

“I thought he was gonna shoot Scully,” Daryl said. “I didn’t really want to shoot him, but…he had a gun to her head. I thought they were really gonna shoot her, or…worse, even. Like they wanted us to leave her behind and just go.” 

“Maybe I shouldn’t say you did the right thing to shoot him,” Carol mused, “but I think you did the right thing. It would’ve been horrible if you’d come back without her. I—would’ve…I don’t want to imagine how that would have felt. To lose her like that. And Sophia wouldn’t have handled it well at all.” 

“I know she’s your friend. You care about her. Sophia, too. Turns out the gun wasn’t loaded, though,” Daryl said. “Shoulda known that. Even the weapons we picked up—and there’s a lotta shit in the back of them two trucks, I promise you gonna see that when we got time to really go through it—even in all the weapons we found, there weren’t no guns or bullets to be found. According to Jacqui, that shit was the first to go in Atlanta.” 

“I believe it,” Carol said. 

“Still, it ain’t like guns and bullets are all that important,” Daryl said. “Not when it comes to the Walkers. Blades and arrows. That’s the best way to go. Quiet so you don’t bring up more of ‘em.” 

“I wish I could use a bow like you do,” Carol mused.

“Why can’t you?” 

“I don’t know how,” Carol said with a laugh.

“You could learn.” 

“You could teach me?” 

She looked at him with expectation on her features. Maybe there was even a touch of excitement there. Daryl’s heart drummed in his chest. 

“Yeah,” he said. “If—that’s what you want. I could teach you.” 

Carol looked pleased. Her smile was soft and sincere, and Daryl was infinitely pleased just to have been the one who put it there. 

“Good,” she said. “I want to be able to do—everything. At least a little bit.”

“Nobody can do everything,” Daryl said. “You do damn near everything around here, though, as it is.” 

“I just do what I can. The same as everyone else.”

“I know you been strugglin’ with the food and—we brought two more mouths. That prob’ly pissed you off. I didn’t even think about it until we were half way here and I thought…she’s gonna be stressed because we’re askin’ her to make it all go even further.” 

Carol laughed to herself. 

“I would’ve been stressed,” Carol said, “if you hadn’t brought me two delivery trucks full of food to make it all seem a little more possible.” 

“That ain’t all food,” Daryl said. “You seen that. Food. Weapons. Clothes and shoes. Piles of shit we might just need. Tents and pots and pans and all. Food’s—maybe it’s like half of one of them trailers. It won’t be enough to make it through the winter. Especially not with two more mouths to feed.” 

“No,” Carol said. “But it’s a start. And it’ll buy us some time. It’ll buy you and Merle some time to figure out what we’re doing.” 

“You got a lotta faith in Merle and me,” Daryl said.

“I do,” Carol said.

The simple, sincere way that she said it made Daryl’s stomach feel warm. She meant it. She had a lot of faith in him. She had a lot of faith in Merle. She believed, and maybe others did, but Daryl found himself to not be nearly as concerned with others as he was with her, that they could save them—they could solve every problem that somehow got dropped at their feet. 

And something inside him made him want to solve every problem for her. 

“What’d you get off the trucks tonight?” Daryl asked.

“Hmmm?” Carol asked.

“The trucks,” Daryl said. “What’d you get off the trucks tonight?” 

“Nothing,” Carol said. “I mean—except the tent for Jacqui and T-Dog and a few things for them. And—those cans of vegetables for dinner.” 

“You didn’t hear Merle? Everybody was s’posed to get somethin’ off the trucks tonight. Early Christmas. Mulder got shoes and Merle give him that blanket to take to Scully ‘cause she was bathin’. Andrea got—well, I weren’t payin’ attention by then, but…everybody was supposed to get somethin’ before we go sortin’ it all out startin’ tomorrow.” 

“I don’t need anything,” Carol said. “Besides—I didn’t do anything to bring those truck backs, Daryl. I don’t really deserve anything that’s on either of them. I mean—it’s different if it’s food or something for the whole camp, but…I didn’t really do anything for the stuff on those trucks.”

“It weren’t about that,” Daryl said. “It weren’t about earning something on the trucks because you got ‘em back here. We knew not everyone was going to Atlanta. That was kind of the point. We brought everything back for everyone, though. Not just for us that went to the city. Sophia got a rag doll.”

Carol smiled and nodded her head.

“She did,” Carol said. “That was enough for me. She was so happy with it.” 

“There’s more for her on them trucks. Special for her. My point is, though, that she got the doll, and she didn’t go to help with the trucks.” 

“That was a gift, though. It’s different. I mean—Merle handed her that doll immediately. It was clear it was for her. I don’t think anyone else was going to fight her for it. And it was clear that—he wanted her to have it. As a gift.” 

“He did want her to have it,” Daryl said. “He saw it before any of us did. He was over in that area of the store we were in at the time, and when we were headed after him, he come back with it. Hell—he was so damn pleased with it…so determined she was gonna have it? I half wanted to ask him if he weren’t just kinda feelin’ sorry he never had no toy to hug up with when he was a kid.” 

Carol swung her feet absentmindedly, entertaining herself as they sat side by side.

“Merle never had a toy to snuggle?” Carol asked. 

“No,” Daryl said. 

“Not even—a bear or anything?” Carol asked. 

Daryl shrugged his shoulders. 

“No. Not that I can recall. I had a dog once. Mama made it; I think. Outta socks. It was all floppy and big eared and big legged and all. Didn’t have it too terribly long before it was the casualty of some drunken fit my old man had. Merle—he didn’t have shit that I remember. His room always looked like a prison cell or somethin’. The old man would get pissed sometimes and strip his bed. Take everything. Even his pillow. I guess Merle just never bothered to have shit, really.” 

“It must’ve been lonely to sleep at night without anything to hold—or to love,” Carol said. 

Daryl laughed to himself.

“Good damn trainin’ for all the nights that come after that, right?” 

Carol frowned at him.

“Did you ever have—anything after your dog, Daryl?” 

Daryl shook his head. 

“Used to sneak into Merle’s room sometimes, at night. To not be so alone. When he weren’t off at juvy. It was better not to have shit, though. Don’t get attached. Don’t hurt so bad when you lose it if you don’t got shit to lose.” 

Carol stared at him a moment. It was a very intense stare—like she was trying to look into his mind through his eyeballs—and Daryl closed his eyes to break the connection. Just holding her eyes that long in the lamplight made his heart drum fast and hard in his chest.

“Do you still feel that way, Daryl?” She asked.

“What?” Daryl asked. “Do I feel what way?” 

“Like—you don’t want to have anything,” Carol said. “Like you never want to be attached because you won’t have to worry about ever losing anything?” 

Daryl’s stomach tightened and twisted. His breathing suddenly felt ragged, and his air was at least a little choked off.

“I wouldn’t wanna lose somethin’ I loved,” he admitted.

“Nobody does,” Carol said. “It’s a risk we have to take, though, to love…”

“You—still wanna take risks like that?” Daryl asked. “After Ed and…what kinda person he was? What he done to you and Sophia?” 

Daryl couldn’t believe that he’d actually asked the question. He thought things like that, plenty of times, but he never actually let himself form words and speak those things out into the atmosphere. It really wasn’t his business, and he shouldn’t care at all, but Carol made it feel like he could ask those things.

She didn’t get mad at him for asking. She smiled softly at him and shrugged her shoulders. 

“Maybe it’s because of Ed and everything he did. Everything we went through. Maybe that’s the reason that I do want to take risks. I loved Ed. I worried about—losing him. In the beginning, it was because I loved him. In the end, I worried about losing him because he had me so convinced that I couldn’t survive without him. I’d never make it, and neither would Sophia. I realize, now, though, that Ed never loved me—not like that. Not so that he worried about losing me. Not that way. He wanted to possess me, but I think that—it was different than love. I don’t believe he really loved me. Not ever. So, maybe a part of me wants to believe that, one day, someone could love me like that. And it could be worth it.” 

Something squeezed at Daryl’s heart. 

He wanted to be loved like that, too. He wanted to love like that. And something, in him, thought that maybe he could love Carol like that. The thought alone was overwhelming, though, and it made Daryl’s mouth run dry.

“Don’t you worry about—losin’ that if you were to find it?” Daryl asked. 

“Was it Shakespeare who said that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?” Carol asked.

“You askin’ the wrong person,” Daryl offered. “I mean I heard it before, but…I don’t know who the hell said it.” 

“I think the idea is that—it hurts to lose things, but maybe it’s better to suffer that hurt and have had the happiness, even for just a while, than it is to have lived without it.” 

“You think that’s true?” Daryl asked. 

“I don’t know,” Carol said, her voice softening until she was practically breathing out her words. “But—I know that it hurts to think of living without it forever. Especially—if you think that…you might see the potential for it.” 

“You see potential for it?” Daryl asked, his stomach almost knotting violently. 

Carol stared at him. Suddenly, he saw fear flit very obviously across her features.

“If I’m wrong,” she said, “then I’ve—gone out on a pretty long limb just to…fall to my death or something.” 

“You have?” Daryl asked, beginning to feel like he was on the verge of hyperventilating.

She laughed quietly to herself. 

“I think I have,” she said. “You’re going to make me go all the way out, aren’t you?” 

“What?” Daryl asked. 

“If I do—just—let me down easy, OK? Don’t—let me fall too hard.” 

Everything within him was screaming. 

“I wouldn’t—never let you fall off anything,” he said. “Not if I could stop it.” 

Carol smiled at him.

“That makes me feel a little better,” she said. “Daryl—do you want to…kiss me?” 

At the moment when he realized that everything he’d been—anticipating? Was that what he’d been feeling? When he realized that it was all happening, and real, and laid out in front of him, he practically felt like every part of his body went numb or tingled, all at once. 

Nothing made sense. His mind swam. And the only thing he knew—really knew—in that moment was what he managed to say out loud, somehow.

“There ain’t a damn thing I want more in this world,” he said, the words falling out even without his meaning to form them. 

The smile on Carol’s lips was perfect. Daryl touched her chin. He ducked his head. And a moment later, the feeling of her lips against his was just as perfect as the smile that the kiss had displaced.

All at once, and with a certainty that was almost frightening, Daryl knew that this—and anything it could possibly lead to in the future—was worth any potential suffering he may have to endure. It only meant that, from this moment forward, he would have to work twice as hard to make sure that he did everything he could to keep anything from causing him that suffering—that loss.

Because now that he’d tasted her lips, and now that his fingers drifted down her soft neck to feel her rapid pulse through her carotid artery, Daryl was sure that he didn’t want to be without those simple, beautiful things again.

And he thought, if he’d heard her right, and his conviction that he had understood her was strengthened when she deepened the kiss, that she agreed with him.


	15. Chapter 15

AN: Here we are, another chapter here. 

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

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Carol had shooed everyone else away. 

She was sorting through two large delivery trucks full of items to try to make heads or tails of things. The best thing she could do was drag the contents of both trucks out and reload it in an organized manner to make life easier for herself in the days and weeks to come. It was clear that, while they’d been moving throughout Atlanta along the route that Jacqui had indicated, they hadn’t taken their time anywhere. They’d grabbed and tossed, for the most part.

Food. Blankets, tents, pots, pans, buckets, and other survival gear. Tools. Weapons. Clothes. Toiletries, odds and ends, luxuries. 

Carol worked her way through it all. She separated it out, loaded it in a more organized manner, and took a mental inventory of what they had and how long it was likely to last if she split it fairly between eleven people. 

She tried to be as fair about things as she could be, but she found a place for everything.

“What’s the verdict, Mouse?” Merle asked, coming up to the open doors of one of the trailers. Carol jumped, yelping in surprise. Merle laughed. “Sorry—shoulda announced my approach. Good damn thing you ain’t had one of them axes or some shit in your hand.” 

Carol relaxed. She laughed to herself and made her way to the doors where Merle was standing.

“What’s your question, Merle?” She asked.

“Ah—well—I got a lot of those,” he mused. “But for the moment—how damn much time does all this buy us, Mouse? In your unprofessional opinion, of course.” 

“You’re asking me?” Carol asked.

“You’d be the best one to know,” Merle said. “Ain’t you the one handles all this shit?” 

Carol felt almost fluttery at the confidence that she could feel being placed on her opinion at the moment. 

“Food-wise, Merle? With meat and fish to stretch things, some foraging…”

“Remember some of that’s gonna be dryin’ up,” Merle said. “And soon like, if we’re bein’ honest.” 

“Taking that into consideration? How tight do we want belts?” 

“I’d rather we didn’t starve nobody,” Merle said. “We got people droppin’ enough weight as it is. Too much and they start not bein’ able to fight off the bugs and shit that winter brings. Too weak to fight Walkers or any damn thing or body else that might show up here. Don’t lighten portions a mouthful more than they are now.” 

Carol shook her head.

“You aren’t going to like what I have to say, Merle,” Carol said.

“I got a good damn feelin’ I already know,” Merle said. “We won’t see spring.”

“Not if we’re living just off this,” Carol said. “I’m going to pass out clothes. Blankets. People ought to be less likely to freeze, but…”

“They gonna starve,” Merle said. “It’s no damn good. Most of us ain’t built for winterin’ hard. We got to move the fuck on ‘fore the first hard freeze.”

“Do you have some ideas, Merle? About—where we might go?” Carol asked.

He looked at her hard, and then his face relaxed.

“I got ideas, Mouse,” he said. “Don’t you worry. You just keep us goin’ while I work it out. We’ll find somethin’. Besides—I got me a feeling my little brother’ll burn down half what the hell’s left of Georgia if you tell him you cold.” 

Before Carol could say anything, Merle turned and walked away, tossing a “Carry on, Mouse,” over his shoulder as he went.

For a moment, Carol stood there and thought about what he’d said. It wasn’t a fire that he started—at least not of the literal type—but the very thought of Daryl warmed Carol, and she turned back to her work of sorting and arranging supplies.

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“What I’m mad about, Scully, is that you know better than that,” Mulder said. 

He’d waited, at least, until they were somewhat alone to scold her, again, for something that had happened days before and was behind all of them. Still, he was having a hard time letting it go, and it continued to surge up inside of him and gnaw at him. 

She could have gotten killed or kidnapped. They could have come back without her. She could be lost, forever. 

Scully sighed.

“Again, Mulder?” She asked, rolling up her pants legs and wading out about knee deep in the ice-cold water of the quarry. “I said I was sorry a dozen times.”

“You know better than to run into a building without checking it first,” Mulder grumbled. “Don’t tell me that being out here has made you forget absolutely every bit of training and experience you have behind you.” 

Scully laughed to herself. With a bar of soap, she was somewhat scrubbing a few garments she’d taken out into the water with her. They weren’t soiled enough for the scrub board scrubbing that chapped their hands and made their fingers ache, but they could still use a little refreshing if they were going to be worn again.

“I feel like I’m forgetting everything out here, Mulder,” Scully admitted. “Everything about—being a civilized human being. The whole world seems like it’s some kind of dream. Everything we knew before was a lifetime away. This is real, Mulder. I didn’t want to believe it. I’m not sure I want to believe it now, but you didn’t see Atlanta. All those military bags we snatched up? They were just in the middle of the street with tanks and bodies. There’s hardly anything left in Atlanta that looks like Atlanta. It’s a war zone now. I bet if there’s anything at all that’s still functioning there, it would only be the CDC. Everything else is either shut down or gone entirely. Or lost to the people who have built gangs there.” 

“All the more reason for you not to go running into buildings that you haven’t checked to see if they’re clear.” 

“I made it out, Mulder, so can we just drop it? I didn’t check for Walkers. I should have, in hindsight, but I just thought—they’d meet me at the door. They seem to be pretty interested in finding us, not in hiding from us. Even if I’d gone in with intention, I wouldn’t have found Jacqui and T-Dog because they were hidden, and I had no reason to believe they were there.” 

“I just don’t want us to get lazy and reckless,” Mulder admitted. “Especially now. Not with these things everywhere.” 

“Judging from what we saw in Atlanta, and from what Jacqui and T-Dog said, I’m not even sure the Walkers are our greatest concerns. We’re doing pretty well, Mulder. We know how to kill them. We’re learning how to avoid them. We don’t see too many of them on a regular basis.”

“You still think it’s the government?” 

“I’m not even sure I believe there’s any government left, Mulder,” Scully said. “If the CDC is still there, I guess there must be, but…I think this got out of the government’s hands.”

“You think it’s the people we need to worry about?” 

Scully nodded her head. 

“The ones that aren’t like us,” she said. “The ones that aren’t like our group.” 

Mulder laughed to himself.

“Were we even always like our group?” He asked. “What does that even mean, Scully?” 

“The ones that might want to kill us, Mulder, for what we have. The things we need to survive.” 

“Would we kill them if they tried to take what we have?” Mulder mused. Scully stared at him. “I’m only suggesting that maybe we’re not all that different.”

She clearly hadn’t prepared for him to say that, and she’d gotten used to not having to deal with things in the way that they once had. She balled up the wet item of clothing she’d just cleaned and threw it at him to express her frustration. It smacked against him, taking his breath away when the cold water seemed to wrap around him.

She thought that was funny, and her laughter tinkled around them, echoing off the stones. 

“Really?” He asked. She grinned at him.

They were living in the middle of nowhere. They were living only just a step above animals. Each day they lost some contact with the civilization that had been bred into them and they eased one step closer to their primal selves. They didn’t forget as much as they simply let go—table manners, manners, etiquette, etc.

They were becoming something. Something other. Something different. 

Yet, despite hunger, uncertainty, and the distinct smell of death that seemed to hang in the air around them, Mulder had never felt as oddly light as he did now. He’d never seen Scully smile as often as she did now. 

Mulder kicked off his shoes quickly and ran into the water. Seeing him coming, Scully sprinted a little deeper and he followed.

“You’ll be in over your head a long time before I will, Scully!” Mulder warned.

She laughed in response and continued until she slipped on the rocks and caught herself before she hit too hard. She got back to her feet just as Mulder wrapped her in his arms. She was shivering. Her teeth, already, were chattering. He could practically watch her lips turned purple as she smiled up at him.

He pressed his lips against hers.

“You’re going to freeze to death,” he said. “Come on—before you get sick.” 

“You won’t get sick just from being cold, Mulder.” 

“Don’t use your doctor voice with me, Scully,” Mulder said, practically dragging her back to the shore. He stopped and grabbed the garment she’d been scrubbing as it floated in the water—the last on her small little task list—and took it with them. He kept an arm on her while she stepped into her shoes, and he followed suit before rushing her back to their little tent and offering her a towel.

“I’ll go out while you change,” Scully said. “And then I can change.” 

“Why don’t you just stay? We can strip down. Dry off. Change together. Get warm.” 

Scully looked at him, big-eyed, and he wondered, honestly, how much Catholic innocence was hidden there. She’d had other relationships—he knew that much. What he didn’t know, though, was how serious those relationships had gotten or how far she’d let them go. 

Mulder got the very distinct impression that Scully had been a good girl all her life. She’d done exactly what society expected of her—or what the Church expected.

And now they were barely more than animals, surviving in the wilderness.

“Nothing is ever going to happen between us, Scully, that you don’t want to happen,” Mulder said. “I give you—all the reins. You’re in control.”

“Why do I hear a ‘but’ coming?” She asked, a touch of sass in her voice to try to hide the somewhat nervous sound there.

Mulder smiled to himself.

“Atlanta isn’t the only thing that’s gone, Scully,” Mulder said. “It’s all gone. There’s nothing left but us. What’s here and now. We can wait, and we can hold onto old rules and outdated decorum, but we’re only doing it out of some sense of obligation to something that you said, yourself, no longer exists.” 

“Or…?” 

Mulder smiled to himself. 

There wasn’t much room to move in the tent if they were both in there. Nudging closer to her, he touched her face. It was already warming. She closed her eyes to the simple touch.

“Or—we can just choose to live. Now. In this world, with everything the way that it is. We can choose to follow the rules as they are now.” 

“What are the rules?” 

“As far as I can tell, there aren’t any,” Mulder admitted. “Beyond, maybe, that we’re a little like the musketeers, right? All for one and one for all.” 

“It’s not very flattering, Mulder, to think that—we’re only having this discussion because we’re possibly some of the last people left alive on Earth.” 

“Scully, even if we went back to Atlanta tomorrow and found out all of this was some kind of elaborate hoax, I would still hope for a relationship with you,” Mulder said. “I’ve had my eye on you since you first came through the door of my office in the basement.” 

“You have not,” Scully said.

“Let me prove it to you. Trust me.” 

“You’re—one of the people I trust most in the world.” 

“Then trust me with this. With—you. Us. I won’t make you sorry.” 

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“See this? It’s like a guard. A little hood. Keeps you from accidentally nickin’ yourself since the blade’s so sharp,” Daryl said, holding the little hatchet out toward Sophia. “Good handle. Gonna give you good leverage. Ain’t too heavy. You’ll keep it clean. Every time you use it on one of them things or—anything? You just gonna wipe it down real good. Clean it off. Take care of your weapon and it’ll take care of you. Here—test it. How’s it feel in your hand?” 

Sophia took the little hatchet. Carol held her breath. She didn’t want to interrupt. She didn’t want Daryl or Sophia to accidentally detect her approach. She’d hadn’t known what was taking place. She’d assumed that Daryl’s selection of the hatchet from the weapons’ pile had been something for himself—not for Sophia.

“Feel OK?” Daryl asked. “Feel good.” 

“I don’t know,” Sophia said, sounding uncomfortable.

“Too heavy? Talk to me.” 

“I don’t want to—kill one of those things, Daryl,” Sophia protested. “They scare me.” 

Carol’s heart ached. It wasn’t fair that her daughter had to face everything she’d had to face in her short life. She didn’t deserve to have lived with Ed. She didn’t deserve to know what he’d done to Carol—what he might have done to her. She didn’t deserve to have seen him killed, or to have to come to terms with this—her new world.

“I get it,” Daryl said. “They scare me, too. They do. They’re scary fuckin’ creatures. And I hope you don’t gotta kill a whole lot of ‘em. I hope me or Merle—or somebody? I hope we’re always there to kill ‘em for you. But what if we ain’t, huh? This right here? It puts the power in your hands, Soph. Puts the control in your hands. Can’t none of ‘em fuck with you if you got this. You see? Beyond that? Somethin’ else makes a grab for you and you sink this blade good an’ deep in ‘em? They gonna let go. Gonna back up.” 

“It works on anything,” Sophia breathed out, like she hadn’t realized such a thing was possible before.

“Anything or anybody,” Daryl said. “Now they say that—with great power, comes great responsibility. So, you gotta be careful with it. It ain’t a toy. You could hurt someone real bad with it. But it’ll be good for protectin’ yourself, just if you need it.” 

“Or Mama?” Sophia asked.

Carol’s stomach tightened.

Daryl looked at her daughter. He was stooped, putting himself at eye level with her. He reached a hand out and squeezed her shoulder. 

“Your Mama’s good, you know? Don’t need nobody to protect her, but if she does? She’s got a lot of people lookin’ out for her. Same as is lookin’ out for you.” 

“But the hatchet could help?” Sophia asked.

Daryl laughed to himself.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Someone seen you with that hatchet? You can bet they wouldn’t fuck with you or your Mama. Not one damn bit.”

“Thanks, Daryl!” Sophia declared. “I’m going to show it to Scully.” 

Daryl laughed to himself and watched after her as she darted off across camp.

Carol held her spot, doing her best to blend in with the tree nearest her, until she was sure that Sophia was out of earshot.

“I seen you there,” he offered, as Carol stepped out from her hiding spot.

“Do you think Sophia saw me?” 

“No,” Daryl said. “She had other things on her mind.”

“Thank you,” Carol said.

“She oughta have somethin’,” Daryl said. “Just in case, really.” 

“I meant thank you for the weapon,” Carol said. “But—also—just for…giving her some confidence. Ed didn’t do a whole lot of that.” 

“That’s pretty much my goal in life,” Daryl teased. “Do what the hell he didn’t do, and skip doin’ a single damn thing he ever did.”

Carol smiled at him. She met him, giving him a kiss, and he gladly took it and returned it with hungry enthusiasm. She had to back up a step to break the kiss and get her breath—almost sure that it could turn into a great deal more than just a kiss if she allowed.

“Maybe just—every bad thing he did,” Daryl said. “After all. He did marry you, didn’t he? And he was Sophia’s Daddy.” 

Carol smiled at the sincerity of the words.

“Is that some kind of proposal, Daryl?” She asked with a laugh.

“Mostly it’s just a thought,” Daryl said, “but it’s any damn thing you want it to be, honestly.” 

Carol couldn’t help but smile at him. 

“Hang onto that thought, Daryl,” she teased. “Now—I’ve got to get dinner started. Do you think you could help me get some wood?” Daryl’s brows shifted. He looked, for just a moment, a bit more like his brother than he ever did at a regular moment. There was a certain resemblance, Carol realized, when they made particular expressions. “The kind that we burn in the fire, Daryl,” she said, heading off into the wooded area. Daryl hesitated only a half a second before trotting quickly behind her.


	16. Chapter 16

AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Don’t forget to let me know what you think! 

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Merle had been discharged from the military—dishonorably. He had been informed that he had a problem with authority. The thought of that still made him chuckle. It hadn’t been incorrect. He did have a problem with authority. He especially had a problem when people who hardly knew their ass from a hole in the ground tried to take control of situations that they weren’t prepared to handle—especially when they were too damned proud to admit that they were in over their heads. That kind of leadership got good people killed. Merle just hadn’t ever been really great at articulating his meaning in a socially acceptable manner.

Merle hadn’t made it to Vietnam. He’d only made it to basic and some of the simulated situations that they’d been thrust into. During those simulations, he’d gotten himself kicked out by essentially making it known that he didn’t think a superior officer was fit to lead them into real battle.

It was for the better. Merle probably would’ve gotten his ass blown up in Vietnam, and he would have left behind his baby brother. He’d left Daryl behind, as it was, when he’d been drafted. Daryl had pretended that he wasn’t alone—pretended that the old man was around because they hadn’t known, for sure, that Rooster Dixon was dead at that time, so nobody could prove that he wasn’t in and out keeping some kind of fatherly watch over things—and Daryl had been trying to live alone to keep from ending up getting lost in a system that would have fucked him over anyway. He’d been a damned kid, and Merle had been drafted.

It was really for the better that he’d had no control over his mouth. He’d gotten the shit beat out of him—something he could easily tolerate and something they turned a blind eye to—and he’d been kicked out. 

He’d gone right back to his baby brother and their shit way of life, barely scraping by, but he had no regrets.

He still believed much like he’d believed back then. 

People shouldn’t try to take control over situations they weren’t prepared to handle—especially when they were too dam proud to admit that they were in over their heads.

Merle was in over his head. Yet, somehow, every last damn person in this rag-tag group of the worst fucking misfits at the end of the world had decided that he would know best how to handle this. He’d admitted he was over his head. He’d told them he welcomed advice and, thankfully, they offered it.

It was easier to solve problems when he didn’t have to solve them entirely alone. Everyone there, it seemed, brought something to the table—even if they thought they didn’t. 

Together, they were admittedly a weird ass group of people, but they could scrape together some decent ideas.

Still, even though they were willing to help Merle, and even though they all knew that they were helping him, they looked to him. The only person that had ever looked to Merle Dixon, before, had been Daryl, and he’d really had no choice—no better options. Having them look to him out of choice made Merle more determined than he could possibly explain not to fail them. Not any of them.

It was getting cold. They’d were holding out, quietly afraid that nothing out there was as safe as what they had here, but the cold would get them if they didn’t go soon. They trusted Merle, somehow, to know when it was time to go and to help them figure out where they were most likely to find a life. 

For now, he focused on making sure they were all ready to stay alive—here and out there. After all, they didn’t know what lie ahead when they were finally driven out of the camp that they were calling home. 

“Keep your backs to each other,” Merle called out, leading one of the drills that he had taken to leading with them in the early morning while they digested breakfast. “Keep the kid in the middle. We’re going forward in my direction. Move with your neighbor. Keep together. Don’t let the gaps get too damned big or they get in that way. Remember that. They get in the damn gaps.”

They ran these drills every morning. Left, right, forward, backward. He yelled out “attacks” for them. A Walker was coming toward this person or that. They were closing in at all directions. Step out, step back in. Keep your back to the group—all backs together. Keep your neighbors close enough to touch as much as possible. If you’re cut off, by anything and for any reason, retreat as quickly and as safely as you can back to the group. Move backward, as much as possible, toward the group. The group will have your back. Your neighbors will support you—shoulder to shoulder. 

They switched neighbors on Merle’s command. They broke formation and found it again, every day. Merle called the commands like an intricate kind of square dance that they all did together. 

Every now and again, they got the chance to practice their skills against more than a phantom Walker herd. Every now and again, the Walkers came in bunches toward the camp and they went out, carefully moving so that even the slowest—forced to walk backwards the whole way—wasn’t left behind. 

Nobody got left behind.

“Keep close to your neighbor! Don’t step too far out. Remember—the whole damn lot of us is only as strong as our weakest person. Keep an eye on your left and right. Protect your spot first, but theirs, too, if they need help. We all need some fuckin’ help some days. Today might be the day your ass needs help. Don’t matter who your neighbor is—that’s the most important person to you at the moment. Every damn person is the most important person. I might think T-Dog here has a dumb ass fuckin’ name…”

“And I might think you’re an ignorant ass redneck,” T-Dog offered quickly and sharply. Merle laughed to himself.

“But right damn now, I’m only as safe as he is. If I let him down, I let every damn person here down. We gonna rotate one hundred and eighty degrees. Relieve them that’s been fightin’ on this side the longest. Let ‘em get a break. Get fresh blood fightin’. Keep your shoulders together. Keep your hands on your weapons. We move on my mark.”

Merle had never been important like he was for this group of people. Merle had never been important before—not really. 

And as the time ticked on, he came to realize that he cared for each of them for what the hell they were, and he would protect each of them to the best of his ability.

He couldn’t stand the thought, now, of going back to being nothing and nobody. He couldn’t stand the thought of being the epic fuck-up that he’d always been. If he could figure out how to make a life for these people—a real damn life? He would overcome that role of being a fuck-up for good. At least, that’s how the hell he saw it.

Somewhere, they could build a real damn life.

It was already starting, whether they planned it that way or not. Life happened naturally and organically. They were, after all, only animals.

T-Dog, who Merle preferred to simply call “T” most of the time, was in a clearly established relationship with Jacqui. The two had come to them that way, it seemed, ever since they’d insisted on being part of the group instead of being left behind in Atlanta to continue surviving on their own.

Mulder and Scully had settled into something that seemed a bit more firmly established than it had been even weeks ago. Scully no longer looked owl-eyed most of the time when Mulder looked at her the way that he did—the way that he only looked at Scully, and Merle figured that Mulder was taking his time with her—letting her find comfort in the home provided by the little tent where they slept and, even if they pretended otherwise or thought they were being discreet, kept each other warm through the nights.

Merle’s greatest source of entertainment, though, was honestly his brother’s struggle with his own feelings. 

Still in his first rut and entirely unsure about what the hell to do, he behaved like every idiot, awkward ass teenage animal ever did when they desperately wanted the mate of their choice but had no idea what to actually do about it because they’d never done it before. 

Nobody—not a single soul—so much as made a move toward the Mouse, but Daryl damn near pissed a wide circle around her every single morning. He stuck close to her during their drills, glaring at Merle when he called to them to switch locations. He worked with her, far more than anyone else, in their late afternoon weapons training sessions where she was learning to defend herself with a bow and handheld blades—the only kind of weapons that any of them were going to bother using in a world where they found acorns more readily than bullets. 

And, sometimes, like a fresh-antlered little dumbfuck buck, Daryl showed off a bit too much around her. And, sometimes, he seemed to run his head into every damn tree around camp because he was heartbroken over not knowing what to do next or how to get to where he wanted to be from where he currently was.

But every time he looked like he was about to descend into some kind of grumpy, angry show of his frustration, his little doe would sidle right up to him and give him a couple of kisses or hold his hand.

She wasn’t pushing him, that much was clear, but she was trying to gently lead him if he’d get his head on straight enough to simply follow her. Merle knew his brother well enough, though, to know that he would worry the white off rice. Daryl could get tangled up in his own thoughts and feelings. Merle was thankful, then, that at least the little woman that he’d set his sights on had some experience—so maybe she could get him there slowly.

As for his own life…Merle was still working on things. Like his brother’s little Mouse, he realized that sometimes patience was a virtue—especially when it wasn’t like a single damn one of them was going anywhere anyhow. 

When night fell, it was impossible to ignore the chill—Mother Nature’s warning that they had to figure out where they were going, and they probably needed to figure that shit out soon. 

Merle was almost confident that he heard Andrea’s teeth chatter as a gust of cold air seemed to blast them. It was a particularly windy night, and moisture hung in the air and threatened a storm. The rain that would fall wouldn’t be ice or snow, but it would still be pretty damn cold when it hit them. On top of that, the cold metal of the back of the truck seemed to leech the warmth right out of a body.

“You could scoot on over here,” Merle offered. “I’ll help block the damn cold.” 

Her teeth chattered a little more loudly for a second.

“I know what you’re doing, Merle,” she said.

“Tryin’ to keep you from freezin’,” Merle offered. “You wanna freeze, suit yourself Sweetcheeks.”

For a moment they sat there in silence. There was nothing to hear but the sound of her teeth chattering and somewhere, not too far away, the call of an owl that lived close by. 

“What’s that noise?” Andrea asked after a moment. “Animal?” 

It wasn’t the owl. Merle could tell from the way that she’d said it. She’d heard something else. He roused himself out of a daydream and trained his ears to listen around them for more than the sound of the wind when it rushed by his head.

He laughed to himself as the sound became a bit clearer and a bit more obvious.

“That there’s the sound of a couple of FBI agents doin’ the nasty, Darlin’,” Merle offered, lighting a cigarette.

“Shit,” Andrea breathed out. Merle laughed to himself. “They really are, aren’t they?” 

“Makin’ love, sweet love,” Merle said with a snort. He offered her a cigarette. She pushed them away eighty percent of the time, but every now and again she accepted. Tonight, she accepted. Merle’s fingers brushed hers as he cupped a hand around her cigarette to help light it. She was half-frozen if the cold of her fingers was any indication of the rest of her body, but he wasn’t going to mention it again. Not yet.

“We shouldn’t be listening to this, you know?” Andrea said.

“What damn choice we got? Whole camp can hear it that ain’t in that RV. Besides—maybe some people need a little nudge figurin’ out what the hell comes next.” 

“Give it a break, Merle,” Andrea growled. “I’m not going to fuck you just because—because they’re fucking each other.”

“You think mighty damn highly of yourself,” Merle responded. “As it turns out, I wasn’t talkin’ about your ass at all. You wanna sit over there and freeze to fuckin’ death? Be my guest, Sugar.”

Merle hadn’t been talking about her, really, but he hadn’t not been talking about her, either. She relaxed, though, and he could practically feel her wall dropping just a bit. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just—are you talking about Daryl and Carol?” 

Merle hummed.

“Why are you so concerned about them?” 

“My brother’s a good damn man. Hard for me not to think of him as a damn boy, sometimes. But he weren’t exactly raised to be the most social creature in the damn world. That Mouse is the first sincere interest he’s ever shown in a woman.”

“And you want him to be happy,” Andrea said. Her voice had taken on a slightly different quality.

“It’s all the hell I ever wanted for him,” Merle said. “I mean—he ain’t a blue-ribbon prize, maybe, but she wouldn’t do too damn bad to have him, neither.”

“I think he’d be good for Carol,” Andrea said. “Ed hurt her badly. I never thought she’d want a man again, really. But she’s clearly very fond of Daryl.” 

“She’s got him hungry for kisses,” Merle said. “He runs his ass around her like he’s half-wild. Waitin’ for her to offer him a kiss like food from her hand. Maybe listenin’ to them two figurin’ out how the hell to scratch each other’s damn itches might stir something up in him to get bold about shit. Otherwise? Her ass is gonna have to jump him if they ever gonna get the trainin’ wheels off and get it goin’.” 

Andrea laughed quietly on the other side of the tailgate. Merle watched the end of her cigarette burn brighter as she took a drag on it. 

“Somethin’ funny or your ass gettin’ delirious as your brain fuckin’ freezes?” Merle asked.

“I’ve been dying to push her to do more than kiss him, too,” Andrea said. “I’ve mentioned it a couple of times. Nights when we’re on watch…Sophia would be safe in the tent. We know what’s out here. I’ve mentioned to her that—he’d be on his own.” 

“And Sophia ain’t dumb, neither. It’s about time her Mama told her ass about the birds and the bees before she slips up lookin’ to play shadow to Scully an’ catches a live-ass lesson.”

The sounds didn’t last much longer. They reached their crescendo and then faded away. 

Andrea sighed on her side of the truck, but Merle didn’t say anything about his assumptions regarding her thoughts on the matter. 

“At least it sounds like he does her descent,” Merle offered. 

Andrea laughed quietly.

“You’re some kind of—connoisseur?” 

“Believe it or not, Darlin’, I live strongly by the philosophy of ladies first—at least in the fuckin’ bedroom. You take care of her, and she’ll take care of you. Simple damn truth.” 

“We shouldn’t be listening to them,” Andrea said. “And it’s even worse that we’re making commentary.” 

Merle laughed to himself. 

“Ain’t no television,” he offered. “Ain’t no radio. And I been followin’ this story since even before the night he talked her outta that long and hard-kept cherry. Kinda get invested in shit after a while.” 

Andrea groaned. From the quality of the groan, though, Merle didn’t thing she was half as horrified as she wanted to pretend to be. He’d been trying to figure her out. Something kept her distant, but he couldn’t imagine, as in the case of the other two brewing couplings, that it was a case of getting someone over the hump of giving up a cherry—at least, he didn’t think that was the case. 

“There’s got to be something better on the radio,” she teased.

Merle hummed at her. Silence fell between them—the deafening silence that made the night seem long and empty. Merle hated that kind of silence, especially when a beautiful woman was this close to him in the darkness. 

He scanned his memory, and started to hum. 

“I know that song,” Andrea said, her tone coming across like she was trying to figure it out. He continued to hum before adding words—carefully chosen. She wouldn’t mind if he butchered the song. He ran the radio station, after all. He crooned to her, keeping his voice low.

“Watching girls passin’ by, it ain't the latest thing, I’m just sittin’ on a tailgate, I’m just tryin’ to make some sense…I’m not waitin’ on a lady, I’m just waitin’ on a friend.” 

Andrea laughed. 

“Really?” 

“You don’t like music, Sugar?” 

“I love music.”

“Don’t like the Stones?” 

“I do—actually.” 

“Then shut the hell up, Andrea,” Merle said with a burst of laughter. “Listen to the damn song, Sugar. It ain’t like you got shit else to do ‘til mornin’.” 

Andrea laughed quietly.

“You’re not wrong,” she said with a sigh.

Merle smiled to himself. He scanned his memory, latching onto the lines that had brought him to this song in the first place.

“Don't need a whore, don't need no booze, don't need a virgin priest, but I need someone I can cry to, I need someone to protect…makin’ love and breakin’ hearts, it is a game for youth, but I'm not waiting on a lady, I'm just waitin’ on a friend…”

As Merle finished quietly crooning the song, keeping his voice low enough so as to not disturb anyone else in the camp, the truck shook as Andrea shifted just a little closer to him on the tailgate. He smiled to himself. 

“What happens after you…win the game, Merle?” Andrea asked.

“Hmmm?” He hummed back at her.

“What happens next?” Andrea asked. “After you win the game? Some good, old-fashioned catch and release? It’s a hell of a place to get some kind of dear John letter.” 

Merle’s stomach tightened.

“Like the song says, Andrea—that shit’s a game for youth. And I ain’t as young as I used to be. Not gettin’ any younger, neither.” 

“You mean—you’ll settle because…there’s nobody else,” Andrea said, half-scolding.

Merle smiled to himself.

“Sugar—I been tryin’ to get your attention since I carried your shit in cardboard boxes into that damn trailer you shared with Carol,” Merle said. “It’s always been you that’s been too good to see me.” 

“You haven’t…I would have noticed the way you’ve been acting,” Andrea said.

“It ever occurred to you that I been changin’ my strategy? A thousand damn times—ever since you moved in. Everything I could think of. Just to see what it took to get you to notice.” He laughed to himself. “If I’da known it weren’t nothin’ but the Stones…”

“And when you change your mind like you change your strategy?” Andrea asked. “And we run into—some group with more people? Some other woman?”

Merle dropped an arm around her. He moved close to her. He found her face with his fingers, and he didn’t ask permission for the gentle kiss that he pressed to her lips. She returned it, letting out a soft sigh as he pulled away from her.

“If you can trust my ass to keep you alive,” Merle offered, “why can’t you trust me not to fuckin’ lie to you? You want me to light us a lamp? Pull out my knife? We can swear some sorta blood oath?” 

“I just don’t want to get hurt,” Andrea offered, sincerely. All the bravado she normally hid behind was stripped away for a moment. 

Merle became aware of the fact that she was shivering, and he drew her next to him, half-wrapping her under the arm of his coat. He closed his eyes, for a moment, to the sensation of her body against his. 

Catch and release had always been Merle’s style. Andrea wasn’t wrong about that. She’d read him right—at least to a point. 

But he’d known there was something different about her the day he’d helped her carry boxes into the trailer—he hadn’t lied about that.

She sunk into him, and he was warmed by her presence in more ways than one. 

“Whole damn world’s gonna freeze soon,” Merle mused. “It’s about damn time you thawed a little. Stay right here—I got’cha.” 

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AN: Clearly, I don’t own the rights to “Waiting on a Friend” – neither the real lyrics nor the slightly altered ones.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Please don’t forget to let me know what you think!


	17. Chapter 17

AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

“What are you thinking about, Scully?” Mulder asked.

“No,” Scully said, laughing to herself. It wasn’t the first time he’d asked her, and it wasn’t the first time she’d refused to share her thoughts with him.

The nights were long and cold on watch, though, and it got hard to keep conversation going when you were concentrating on staying warm and staying awake. Still, conversation helped keep them from drifting off too much.

Mulder had dedicated most of his life to the X-Files and, now, he was living in one. There had been times in his life when he’d imagined solving some mystery and coming face-to-face with a whole new world and civilization, but this had never been what he’d imagined. This was, instead of a new civilization, the stark lack of any kind of civilization. At least, there was nothing left as far as they knew, though they did sometimes talk about the possibility of finding something when they moved on from here. 

In a very different way than before, everyone was starting to get onboard with what Mulder had always thought—maybe there was something out there. At the very least, they could hope that there was something out there.

They wanted to believe.

For now, though, their little group was the only thing they were sure of. This group, and this camp—their small population—was all they there were absolutely certain still existed of the world they’d known before. 

Leaving civilization behind meant that they were leaving parts of themselves behind. They were shedding their metaphorical skins and becoming something else. Maybe, if they were being honest, they were becoming the purest forms of themselves that they’d ever been—versions of themselves that weren’t shaped and molded by the expectations of society.

Mulder hadn’t lied to Scully when he’d said he’d been attracted to her since she first set foot in his basement office. However, he wasn’t sure that he would have found the courage, as her work partner, to pursue a relationship with her. He wasn’t sure, either, that she would have let down her walls enough to show him that, beneath the absolute iron-woman exterior she had when it suited her, she was endearingly soft and loving when she wanted to be.

Mulder wasn’t sure that, if they hadn’t fallen head over feet down the rabbit hole into this world that seemed barely possible, he would have been able to admit that he loved her, or that she would have been able to admit that she loved him, too.

“Come on,” Mulder ribbed. “Share with me, Scully. My brain’s going numb. You’ve been quiet since I asked you what you wanted.” 

“That’s a loaded question, Mulder,” Scully said. “I mean—there are a lot of things that I want. And not one of them doesn’t have some contingencies attached to it.” 

“That’s not what you were sitting over there thinking about all this time,” Mulder scolded. Scully laughed. “I asked you for the first thing that came to your mind.” 

“Carol’s deer stew,” Scully said with a slight hint of defeat to her tone. Mulder couldn’t help but laugh.

“The first thing that comes to your mind, when I ask you what you want, is Carol’s deer stew?” 

Scully hummed. 

“Hot,” she said. “And—all of it I want. I want to eat until I’m miserable.” Mulder did his best to choke back his amusement, but he didn’t choke it back quickly enough and Scully was obviously sensitive over her current deepest desires. “See? That’s why I didn’t want to tell you.”

“I’m not making fun of you, Scully,” Mulder said. “I just—might have thought you wanted something…more.” 

“I’m hungry,” Scully admitted. “And cold. And every time we have the stew I think—I wish that there wasn’t anybody else that needed to eat. At least, not until I had all I could stand.” 

Mulder laughed to himself and hugged against Scully. The bulk of the coat she’d gotten from the supply truck made her seem larger than she was. In reality, the coat was about four times too large and it swallowed her whole. 

“We’re going to find more food,” Mulder said, “and when we do? I’ll—figure out how to bribe Carol into making enough stew for you to eat until you get sick.”

“You’re a true romantic, Mulder,” Scully said. She let a moment of silence fall between them before she spoke again. “What about you, Mulder? What do you want?” 

Mulder smiled to himself.

“All I want is you, Scully,” he said, accepting her playful swat and the happy hum that she probably hadn’t meant for him to hear. 

They guarded silence for a little while, and Mulder wished quietly for some coffee or, really, anything hot to warm his insides. Scully’s desire for a full stomach of hot deer stew wasn’t really as off-the-wall as he’d pretended. The knowledge that she was hungry, too, gnawed at his stomach every bit as much as the hunger he felt did. 

They were doing their best. All of them were. But that didn’t mean that their new lifestyle didn’t leave a few things to be desired.

“Did you hear that?” Scully asked, breathing out the words.

The things that went bump in the night, for them, were attracted to sound. If what she’d heard wasn’t wildlife, she was smart to keep her voice down and avoid drawing too much attention. 

“What?” Mulder asked.

“Something in the woods,” she said. “I heard the underbrush move.” 

“Deer?” 

“I think it’s a person, Mulder,” Scully whispered. 

“Person or Walker?” Mulder asked.

Without having to give her any instruction, she followed him as he slid off the tailgate and readied his weapon. She favored a small machete that was easy to wield one-handed. Mulder, for his part, had favored a small crossbow that had proved pretty easy to handle, even if it had taken him the better part of a day to feel even remotely confident reloading it. He also carried a knife, though—a large, garish blade that Merle had chosen for him—since the crossbow wasn’t effective when there were several Walkers which needed to be dealt with in a hurry.

Mulder heard the light squeak as Scully opened the door on one of the camping lanterns and, a moment later, they weren’t entirely in the dark. The light didn’t penetrate too much of the pitch black, though—the moon was hidden behind heavy clouds.

They moved, together, toward the source of the noise to try to verify that there were, indeed, Walkers headed into camp before they sounded any kind of alarm that would rouse everyone from their sleep and, more than likely, get adrenaline pumping to the point that nobody would sleep for the rest of the night.

Before they even made it to the edge of the woods, though, it seemed that whatever Scully had heard had chosen a slightly different path and raised an alarm of their own.

The scream was unmistakably Carol. The second scream came from Andrea. 

The third, came from Mulder and Scully, simultaneously, as they did their best to raise alarm and rouse the rest of the troops. 

The surge of adrenaline in Mulder’s veins was immediate and overwhelming. Everything was happening instantly and in slow motion, all at the same time. He could barely keep straight what he needed to do and how he needed to help. He could hardly work out what was happening and where it was taking place.

Somehow, though, he became aware that what they were fighting wasn’t Walkers. These were people—men and maybe women. They were vicious. They’d probably gone wild from the lack of civilization and basic needs. There was no telling how long they’d been there, waiting for this moment to fall on all of them in the dark. There was no telling what all they might be after.

Mulder had killed before, more times than he wanted to count. It never really got easier to kill someone—not even when it was done in self-defense or in defense of others. Still, it was easier tonight than it ever had been before. It was easier when he knew that every single life he took was a life taken to save someone he cared about—the only people left in the world or, at least, in his world.

He heard Scully scream. Her cry for help broke through every other sound around him. He worked his way away from the man who had come directly after him and worked toward where she was fighting, shoulder-to-shoulder with Carol, as the two women tried to keep Sophia behind them and away from the person they could only see well thanks to the fact that Scully was sacrificing the use of her left hand to holding a light—meaning that she was really relying a great deal on Carol to do her best to fight the man with her knife. 

Mulder was just about to try to run over there, closing the distance as fast as he could, when Scully made her next move. She swung the lantern and, making contact with the person’s head, the lamp spilled its liquid contents. The flame immediately followed its fuel source and, in what seemed like only a second, the man went up in flames like a howling candle. He ran, trying to save himself, perhaps, with what was left of his instinct, and Merle stopped him from catching the whole camp on fire by dispatching an arrow straight into his skull and dropping him to a flaming mass on the ground.

“Fuckin’ savage, Firecracker,” Merle called out with a snort, just before he raised his arm and bashed at another person with the same bow he’d just used to put their flaming friend out of their misery.

Just as the flames were dying down from consuming clothing, hair, and flesh on the now-still body, the fight was dying down.

The people who had made a stand had come in strong and determined, but they hadn’t really been ready for this fight. Merle said as much after doing something of a Marco Polo act to check and make sure that they were all accounted for. Nobody had been killed, though there were a couple reports of minor injuries for Scully to tend to as soon as a significant fire could be built by which she could work without straining her eyesight too much.

“Hunger and desperation’ll drive just about any animal to do some stupid shit,” Merle mused over the fire once it was finally blazing. Scully worked on cleaning wounds and bandaging them while Carol and Jacqui worked on warming water for Scully’s work and for others to consume as coffee or tea. The night, as they knew it, was pretty much shot. They’d stay up, together, to see the sun. “Even attackin’ where the hell they know they’ll be killed. Still—if you ask me, that’s a damn clear indication that it’s time for us to pack our bags and pull up our tent poles.”

“They were people,” Glenn said, still in something of a fog as he accepted a mug from Carol. “We murdered them.” 

“Kill or be killed,” Merle mused. “Law of the fuckin’ wild. And that’s what the hell we are now. Fuckin’ wild. Every last one of us. We don’t belong to nothin’ more’n Nature herself at this point.” 

Glenn was still having trouble stomaching what they’d had to do. They all were, really, but everyone handled things differently. 

“Why should we leave, then?” Glenn asked, clearly seeking to distract himself. “Doesn’t that mean we won? Defended our territory or something like that?” 

Merle laughed quietly, amused by Glenn’s choice of words.

“Our damn pack defended our territory, alright. The fact that they knew about our territory, though, tells me we ain’t as hid as we once was. There’s no tellin’ how long they been watchin’ us—waitin’. There’s no tellin’, neither, how many other fuckers know we’re out here. Next damn time, we might not get so damn lucky that we walk away with some cuts and shit but still standing.” 

“So where do we go?” Mulder asked. It was a question that had been asked what felt like a thousand times before, but it sounded different this time. He felt like the answer would be different, too. This time there would be an answer. There would be movement.

“Atlanta’s overrun with the fuckin’ dead,” Merle said. “Thank you,” he interrupted himself when Carol handed him one of the mugs full of some hot liquid. 

“It’s overrun with the living, too,” T-Dog said when Merle’s words were stopped by his sipping on the hot beverage.

“Scully’s not wrong, though,” Merle said. “CDC will be the last link to the civilized world still standin’ if it still exists. Could be our chance to find out what the hell this is—what the hell’s bein’ done about, if there’s even anybody left to do any damn thing.” 

“You wanna go there?” Daryl asked.

“I don’t think it’d hurt the check it out,” Merle said. “Ride by or whatever. See what there is to see. If there ain’t shit there or they don’t got shit to offer us, we move on.” 

“Move on where?” Mulder asked.

“Some damn where away from here,” Merle said. “Somewhere we can get some decent ass shelter. Maybe some decent ass protection from the Walkers and the elements. We can camp in short stays. Seek out shelter. Move around, you know? Until we figure out what the hell feels right. Some damn where so we ain’t close enough for every damn cretin to get to us that’s tryin’ to hold the fuck out in Atlanta and crawlin’ out at night to try to steal what they don’t got for themselves.” 

Mulder thanked Carol when she passed him a steaming mug. He tasted it. It was weak tea—the same teabag going for quite a bit of the liquid—but it was the heat that really mattered.

“This ain’t a dictatorship,” Merle offered after a moment of silence. “You got somethin’ to say, say it. You look to me to give you all an answer. I give you what I had, but that don’t make it gospel.” 

“Might as well be a burnin’ bush as far as I’m concerned right now,” Daryl offered. 

“I don’t like the idea of going to Atlanta,” Jacqui offered. “And I don’t believe there’s much there that’s worth saving anymore. But—I agree that the CDC would be the safest place in Atlanta, and it would probably be the last place we could go to find out anything official—if there is such a thing as a government anywhere in the United States.”

“Or the world, maybe,” Carol offered.

“Settled, then,” Merle said. “If nobody’s got any better ideas, we’ll pack up and head out with the first light.”

“Shouldn’t we get some sleep?” Glenn asked.

Merle laughed to himself.

“If you can sleep, then you go ahead and do it. That goes for anybody that thinks they can. It’d be best, if you got the stomach and the mind for it. The rest of us’ll be up keepin’ watch for the sun.”


	18. Chapter 18

AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

Charlibubble said she missed this one, and I did too, so here it is! 

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think.

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Merle stood, cramped in a small room, with the people that he now considered his family.

They smelled.

They smelled like the wildness that was settling over all of them—like wild animals. There was a certain scent, in Merle’s opinion, to anything that wasn’t domesticated. They were starting to smell like that. 

They also smelled like campfire, dirt, sweat, and the soap they’d used to wash their bodies and their clothes. They smelled like fear—that lingering cat-piss smell —and like the rain that had soaked them pretty good when they were standing outside the doors begging entrance to the CDC before the Walkers closed in on them. They smelled a little like the rotting world around them—like those Walkers—thanks to the few they’d had to kill before the doors had opened to them.

Merle never would have smelled all of this out at the camp. He wouldn’t have smelled it in the vehicle where he’d ridden with Andrea beside him—both of them smelling equally wild. 

He smelled it, though, thanks to the otherwise antiseptic smell of the cramped room where they huddled together and waited to offer over a sample of their blood to the doctor who had let them into the CDC and promised them everything they needed, and as much explanation as he had, as soon as he’d filled his little box with vials of their blood.

Carol had volunteered to go first. Merle had watched as Daryl had circled around the man. Merle could practically smell the warning—the pure threat—rising off of his brother’s skin. Even if Daryl didn’t realize he was doing it, Merle did, and it made him smile to himself. 

The doctor, fortunately or unfortunately, could also sense the threat to his well-being. It made him nervous and, after the third time he failed to stick Carol correctly, Daryl had practically lunged at him. Scully, anxious to avoid any kind of conflict, had begged a turn to try from the doctor, and she’d been successful. When Carol had found herself somewhat faint upon standing, thanks to the fact that they’d been living on light rations for a while, Daryl had held her to him—offering support, but, as Merle saw it, also sniffing around for any evidence of long-lasting injury to someone very, very important to him. Someone more important, in fact, than he’d even fully admitted so far. 

Carol would be fine, especially after she got a little water and food into her system. The whole thing, though, made it so that when they suggested that Sophia go next, to get it out of the way, the little girl had melted down entirely.

Merle stepped forward, finally, and grabbed her by the arms, pulling her away from her mother who she seemed reluctantly prepared to fight in her panic. Merle bent down and turned her around to face him.

“Hey Shortstack,” he said, giving her a smile, “it ain’t no big deal. Not now that Scully’s handlin’ it. You seen she got it easy. Quick. Not a thing to it. You trust her, don’t’cha?” 

Sophia’s bottom lip rolled out. She looked at Scully, reluctant to speak against her hero, but also reluctant to give in. She nodded slightly. 

“Come on,” Merle said. “I’ma go first. You can sit on my lap. Then—you can bury your face in my chest. You can go after me.”

Sophia didn’t look like she loved the idea, but she had very little choice. Merle picked her up. She should have weighed a great deal more than she did. Still, she weighed a great deal more than she would have if her mother hadn’t been giving up more than her fair share of food to make sure Sophia got a little extra to keep growing. Merle reminded himself that, moving forward, they had to keep an eye on that. They trusted Carol to keep them all fed, but, in the process, that meant that nobody was really making sure she was getting and truly consuming her fair share. 

Merle settled the girl across his knee and looped the arm he wasn’t giving to Scully around her. Sophia watched everything that Scully did very carefully.

“You good,” Merle said, “and when this is all done—I bet Firecracker here lets you sleep with her tonight.” 

“Really?” Sophia asked.

“You bet!” Merle said. He laughed to himself at Scully’s expression. Sophia was immediately excited, though, and more relaxed. The promise of a slumber party was better than a lollipop for her—and he figured Scully could proverbially take one for the team. He winked at Scully and accepted that she stabbed him far harder than she had to with the needle. He clenched his teeth, though, careful not to react in any visible way and scare Sophia. When he was done, he swore to her that he was fine—it wasn’t even any kind of a big deal—and then he turned her around to wrap her around his body and bury her face against his chest so that Scully kept possession of only one of Sophia’s arms with Merle’s body practically encircling the rest of her.

If Sophia could smell the scent of wild, and rain, and dirt, and sweat, and camp on him, she didn’t say so and she didn’t seem to mind. She hugged tight against him and rubbed her face against his chest in an odd sort of way that made his heart beat faster—a sound she probably heard. He patted her head and stroked her hair when she whimpered at the stick of the needle.

“Almost done now, Shortstack,” he assured her. “Hardest part’s over. You doin’ good—almost done now.” 

When all was done, Merle stood up and took the little girl with him. Carol was so close to him that he nearly knocked her down when he accidentally bumped into her. 

“I got her,” he assured her. “She’s alright. Ain’t you alright, Shortstack?” 

Sophia wiped her nose on his shirt. A little snot, though, simply blended in with everything else his shirt had likely collected.

“I’ma spend the night with Scully tonight, OK Mama?” Sophia asked.

Carol made a noise, looked at Scully, and then smiled at Sophia when Scully nodded her head in Carol’s direction.

“Alright, Sweetheart,” Carol agreed, patting Sophia’s shoulder. “Are you OK? You want me to hold you?” 

“I think you fine on your feet,” Merle said, concerned about Carol putting on too much of a show for her daughter at the moment. “And we fine on mine.” 

Sophia hugged in tight against him and rested her head on him again. She was tired. She hadn’t slept much the night before and, now, all that adrenaline was catching up with her. Merle caught sight of Andrea watching him from her spot in line to offer over a blood sacrifice. Merle felt oddly warm from the tight and trusting hug he was receiving from Sophia. The expression on Andrea’s face, though, for just a moment, warmed him in an entirely different way.

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The doctor went by the name of Jenner, and he told them a pretty shortened version of what he said was a long and boring story. The virus hit. It spread. The government tried to control it. They failed.

The CDC however, was designed to be the last thing ever standing. It drew on reserves that had been put into place in the event of an apocalyptic occurrence such as the one in which they were living. Jenner’s fellow doctors and scientists had opted out of the whole process—each of them choosing to end their life in the way which most suited them—but Jenner was still there. Mostly, Merle figured, he was a man that didn’t want to off himself. Whether it went against some conviction he had or simply went against his constitution, Merle didn’t know. It didn’t matter. The man, he figured, had a right to keep on living if he wanted to do so.

He seemed happy enough to see them, though. He promised Scully a tour of the facility and access to his notes on the virus. He also promised all of them basically everything they could dream of and had been imagining for a while. There was food and drink in quantities that they couldn’t even imagine. There were hot showers, blankets, pillows, and comfortable places to sleep.

Merle had a gut feeling, which he was sure everyone else probably shared with the exception, maybe, of Sophia, that another shoe was bound to drop and to do so soon, but for now he figured they should do their best to enjoy what they had.

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

Such a sentiment had been true for them since this whole damned thing started and they’d outrun the first of the dangers. If things hadn’t changed too damn much, then it was just another day in paradise—just another day of the same old shit. 

But at least they could have a full stomach, a hot shower to wash off some of the stench, and a good night’s sleep—and maybe more, but Merle wasn’t sharing his hopes out loud.

Everyone else clearly felt the same. 

At the table, they ate and drank in staggering amounts. Merle watched, practically slack-jawed, as the women ate portions that he would have honestly believed to be genuinely too large for their stomachs. He encouraged them, though, happy to see that everyone could finally eat. Alcohol flowed fairly freely, as well, at the table. Merle, himself, didn’t actually drink very much. He only had a couple of shots of whiskey to knock the chill off that seemed to have settled in his bones from the cold they’d lived in for so long outside of the building. He did lay claim to a bottle, though, and a tumbler when they got up from the table. He figured he’d sleep better with some sweet dreams under his pillow—especially if he wasn’t able to talk a certain semi-reluctant blonde into being his hot water bottle.

Merle eyed his comrades after they left the dining area—Jenner having promised him that, just this once, he was more than happy to clean up without any assistance—to see how people walked in the tight little corridors of the part of the CDC where Jenner had told them they were welcome to stay. While they’d been eating, Jenner had snuck away for a little while to leave towels and other items so that they could find them.

In the corridor, watching everyone, Merle decided they were mostly OK. Carol had suffered some claustrophobia at the start—since their quarters were underground—but it had passed pretty well as she’d accepted that they could, in fact, live and breathe here. Merle also decided that, even though they’d had some drinks, nobody was sloppy drunk. That was for the better. He had some ideas, and if some of them had been sloppy drunk, those ideas would have changed quickly and drastically.

With limited showers on offer—six total, to be exact—and with everyone still looking to Merle like they needed his permission to take a piss, he had pushed Mulder and Scully, and Sophia by extension, toward the showers. He’d sent Carol, and then he’d sent T-Dog and Jacqui, which he knew would share a shower, and finally he’d sent Daryl. The rest of them would wait their turn.

Then, surveying the room quickly that was going to belong to him and his brother, he’d double-timed his steps to the room that Andrea would be sharing with Carol.

Andrea was still smelling wild and like all the things they’d carried into the somewhat sterile environment with them. She seemed hyperaware of her stench and her filth. When Merle stepped up to the door of the room, she didn’t notice him at first. She was sitting, in the middle of the floor like she feared dirtying anything in the space, with a book. Merle stood there, as quiet as he could be for a moment, and simply watched her.

She was filthy from their last fight before they’d been ushered inside. Her skin was red and chapped from sun, and wind, and cold. Her hair was tangled, wild, and barely swept back into a rough ponytail. 

She was beautiful, though, and Merle was drawn to her in a way that he hadn’t ever felt drawn to a woman before. Of course, he knew that if he told her that, she’d think it was just a line to get her into the sack—and she wouldn’t be entirely wrong. There was very little that he could think of that seemed like it would be more pleasing than taking her to bed.

But he could wait until she was ready.

He cleared his throat and she jumped, almost throwing her book in surprise.

“Gotta proposition to make,” Merle said, inviting himself into the space.

“I bet you do,” she said, some challenge to her tone. There was, maybe, some amusement there, too. Merle detected a pretty healthy amount of something like nervousness, as well. He swallowed back his own amusement.

“Hear my ass out,” he said. “I’ma sleep in here tonight.” She made a face and he held up his hand before she could fight too hard. “We’ll sleep like brother an’ sister if it makes you happy, Sugar. Ole Merle’ll sleep right the fuck over there. Sleep on the cold, hard floor like an old hound if that’s what’cha say I gotta do.” 

Andrea laughed quietly to herself.

“Why, Merle? Just to be close to me?” 

Her voice nearly dripped with something akin to sarcasm, but Merle could hear that nervousness still lingering there. One day, he might get the wall down, but it was becoming evident to him that he’d have to break it down easy—this wasn’t one he wanted to just barrel through like a wrecking ball. He didn’t want to do any damage. 

His interest, after all, if he was being honest, was in the long run.

“I ain’t never gonna turn down bein’ close to your ass, Sugar,” Merle offered softly. She visibly changed her position ever so slightly. “But the rooms here is handed out. Filled up. And if I make it clear that I’m sleepin’ in here, your lil’ roommate’s gonna be lookin’ for a place to sleep. And I got a pretty good idea where she can go with her lil’ blanket an’ her pillow. You see? An’ then she ain’t gotta look for no pretense, and she ain’t gotta ask for no help, but both of us is helpin’ things to go where the hell they been tryin’ to go for a while now. All the while savin’ your lil’ friend’s dignity an’ makin’ it so she don’t gotta be more forward than she’s comfortable with.” 

Andrea smiled to herself. She raised her eyebrows at Merle.

“Putting people in the right place at the right time?” She asked.

Merle hummed at her. 

“My lil’ brother ain’t gettin’ no younger an’ ain’t nobody gonna be feelin’ no more relaxed than they do right now after a meal like that an’ a good, hot shower.” 

“It’s the perfect opportunity for them,” Andrea said. Merle hummed his agreement. “Are you thinking—it’s the perfect opportunity for someone else, Merle?” 

Merle laughed to himself. 

“Meant what I said, Sugar. I ain’t never forced my way into no woman’s bed. Never will. Ain’t never had to.” He winked at her. “I’ma get my blanket an’ shit. You decide where the hell it goes. That’s all the hell there is to it. I yield to you, Andrea, so you ain’t got no worries. Not from me.”


	19. Chapter 19

AN: Here we are, another chapter here. 

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

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Daryl stared at her when she took her arm away from her bundle of items to knock at the doorframe and get his attention. She could practically hear his heart beating. She may have been imagining it, but she thought he blanched slightly. 

Carol gave him her best reassuring smile.

“Merle’s sleeping with Andrea,” Carol said. “He said I could sleep in here.”

“Yeah—I bet he did,” Daryl mused. “Listen—you ain’t gotta do that. You don’t gotta sleep in here. Not if you don’t want to. You—want to?”

Carol’s stomach danced with butterflies. There was some hesitation to his question and, maybe, some hopefulness. To tell Daryl what she really wanted would be pretty improper. Still, Carol had already figured out that Daryl, more than likely, was quite inexperienced—if he had any experience at all—and he needed her to take the lead, at least until he built up some confidence.

“I don’t want to—not stay here,” Carol said. “Unless you would rather I go somewhere else, Daryl.” 

“I don’t want’cha to not stay here,” Daryl said quickly and definitively. “But—I don’t want…”

“What?” Carol pressed when he broke off.

“I don’t want’cha to feel like you have to do nothin’.” 

Carol smiled as reassuringly as she could. She came inside and pushed the door closed to a crack, not closing it entirely. This room, like the others, had two couches that would fold out into double beds. It would have allowed for the maximum amount of people to stay here when situations arose, like this one, where they weren’t able to leave work every day for their homes. Carol put her pillow and blanket on the couch that Daryl hadn’t already pulled apart to remove the interior bed. Carol walked over to help him through the process of getting the bed made up.

“I don’t feel like I have to do anything,” Carol assured him. “Anything I do—I choose to do.” 

“I don’t want’cha to feel like you…trapped,” Daryl said after they’d worked, in silence, to make up the bed. 

Carol smiled at him.

“The door’s cracked open,” she said. “At least—for now. I could leave if I want to, right? I could—walk right down the hall and find somewhere else to sleep.”

“If you want to,” Daryl said with a nod. “You—wanna do that?” 

“No,” Carol said, not trying to hold back her smile at all because she thought that, just maybe, the smile helped to fortify Daryl’s nerves just a bit. “You want me to leave?” 

“No,” Daryl said, his voice coming out with a slight bark like it got caught in his throat. “You want me to—help you make up that bed?” 

Carol glanced toward the other couch. She looked back at Daryl. It was now or never. She had to make her move. Daryl was going to be the perfect gentleman, at least to the best of his abilities. He would never try to push her, or frighten her in any way. Up to now, he’d never even kissed her without her inviting him to do so.

He needed a little more confidence. He needed a little more permission. And, since she was certain he was quite inexperienced, he needed all of that to be explicit so that he’d be left without any doubt at all.

“That depends on you,” Carol said. “Do you think—we’ll need it?”

“What do you mean?” Daryl asked.

Carol could tell, by his expression, that he knew exactly what she meant. If he didn’t know, he was at least a little hopeful. That helped to give her a little more confidence.

“Do you want me to sleep in that bed, Daryl, or do you want me to share this one with you?” Carol asked. “Nobody’s making me do anything. But I am making you choose. Do—we need both beds?” 

Daryl was showered clean. He’d scrubbed until his skin was pink from the hot water and the scrubbing. He was wearing a white t-shirt that was clearly relatively new, and one of his pairs of jeans that had been washed within recent memory. He was, at least to Carol, perfect. And the slight expression of anxiety on his features, the overly rapid rise and fall of his chest, and that somewhat begging, hopeful expression in his eyes that he got when he came near to her and, practically puckering at her, hoped for an offered kiss, made Carol’s heart feel like it swelled in her chest.

She wanted to hold him. She wanted to touch him—to allow him to touch her. She wanted to see him accept that this wasn’t something she was going to change her mind about at every passing hour—like he sometimes seemed to think she would about the kisses she doled out to him every time he came near, like a starving animal, to beg for another. 

He shook his head. The shake was barely perceptible. 

“What was that?” Carol asked. She offered him a teasing smile and a raised eyebrow. The expression comforted him slightly, as she hoped it would.

“No,” Daryl said, croaking out the word.

“No…what?” Carol asked.

“You can sleep here,” Daryl said. “No—we don’t need that bed.”

As a way to further cement what he was saying, Daryl went over to the other couch and gathered up Carol’s pillow and blanket. He quickly brought it back with him. He placed it on the bed as a gesture to say, with all finality, that Carol would be settled there. 

Carol repaid him with a kiss—as she’d recently started “paying him” for nearly everything wonderful that he did from chores to hunting. She’d been careful with the kisses, though, sensing that Daryl was nervous and may even be easily frightened by them if they felt too demanding.

This time, when she kissed him, he grew a little bold and daring. The idea of sharing a bed, perhaps, was all that he needed to nudge him to make a little of his desire known. This time, when she kissed him, he deepened the kiss. It was hard, and he nearly slammed their mouths together. There was a quick bite of accidental pain and Daryl backed off because he’d felt it, too.

“Sorry,” he breathed out.

“Don’t apologize,” Carol said quietly. “Kiss me again.”

He nodded at her before he did kiss her again. This time, it was more tentative. This time, Carol helped him find the middle ground between a soft kiss and one that might leave them both with concussions. This time, she let her tongue glide over his and accepted that, when he tried to return the gesture, he nearly choked her. She accepted the absolute feeling of starvation that hung behind the kisses, and she felt flattered that she had stirred up such a desperate longing in the man.

His arms went around her in the kiss. They held her tight and pulled her body almost flush against his. Probably without intention, he bucked his hips into her, and she recognized his condition even through the pants he was wearing. Carol’s hands trailed around to Daryl’s back and she slipped her fingers under the soft, white t-shirt. She ran them over his skin. Immediately, her fingertips danced over something. She paused in her kissing, in question, when they hit the raised bumps of silky, soft skin.

Daryl pulled away quickly. He frowned at her and shook his head.

“Don’t look at ‘em,” he said. “I got—scars.” 

Carol’s stomach twisted. Merle had scars across his back—red, angry lines that were evidence of lashes doled out to him. He didn’t hide them, but Carol couldn’t recall having seen Daryl without his shirt. Now she knew that he had scars, too, but Daryl hid his.

“I have scars, too,” Carol said. Daryl raised his eyebrows in question and Carol nodded. “They’re not the same, but…does knowing that make you not want to look at me? Do you—not want to see my body?” 

“Wanna see all of you,” Daryl said.

Carol’s stomach danced. She heard the sincerity in the words. She felt that they were deeper than even their obvious meaning. He wanted to see all of her—every last bit of her. She was sure, even, that he meant more than her body.

“I want to see you, too,” she said. “Scars don’t scare me, Daryl.” 

He looked pleased with that, and he showed his pleasure by coming back for another kiss. This time, Carol didn’t have to put her hand against his face to slow him. She didn’t have to caress his cheek to hold him back, slightly. He came timidly at first, but then he found the perfect pressure for the kiss. And Carol repaid him by giving him everything she thought he might want in a kiss—and by pressing her body against his and gently nudging him with her own hips as a silent way of telling him that what his body wanted, he could have.

Carol brought her hands around to unfasten the button on Daryl’s pants. His pants, like her own, hung on his frame loosely. All of them, honestly, looked a little comical in their clothing. Even the clothing that they’d found with what few things they were able to snatch in Atlanta didn’t seem to fit quite right. 

They were changing in many ways, and physically their bodies were becoming leaner—thinner, from hunger and from constant exercise.

Carol’s fingers ghosted over hipbones—not as prominent as her own—as she pushed Daryl’s pants down. They puddled on the floor around his boots. She kissed him, at intervals, while she continued her work. She slipped her hand into his underwear. He was hard, and there was no pretending that she didn’t know his interest. She was going to allow him everything he wanted, too. There would be time for everything—for now, she was satisfied to feed his hunger and, in exchange, to have a little of her own satiated. 

He hissed at her and pulled away, nearly falling down with his pants around his ankles. He seemed surprised to find himself in such a state of undress, but as soon as it registered, he rushed to the door and slammed it shut—not that anyone seemed to be prowling the corridor now that they were all shut into their rooms for the night—and then he made quick work of shucking off his clothes.

Carol didn’t need ceremony right now. She undressed as quickly as he did, and then she held her arms open to invite him back to her. 

For just a moment, he kept his distance and looked at her, brow furrowed, while he took in her appearance. She felt the desire to cover herself, for a moment, under such careful scrutiny, but she resisted the urge and allowed him to get an eyeful. 

“Like—what you see?” Carol asked.

Daryl seemed to rise up and out of the fog into which he’d momentarily settled. His features softened. He nodded and ran his fingers through his hair. 

“Yeah,” he said.

“Come here,” Carol directed.

He came quickly, slowing his steps just seconds before he toppled them both onto the bed. He kissed her again—he was starting to truly get the hang of the kisses, and he clearly really enjoyed them. He was even starting to become a little experimental with them, nipping and sucking in place of some of the previous tame kisses.

“I’ma come soon,” he warned. “I can feel it. Won’t last long. Maybe I ought not to tell you that, but…”

Carol swallowed back her amusement.

“That’s OK,” she said. She took his hand and guided it between her legs. Immediately, her body buzzed in happy pleasure to feel his fingers as they explored her. He rubbed her, gently, like a blind person trying to figure out what they might be experiencing.

“Soft,” he said. 

“Yeah?” She asked. He nodded.

“Like silk.”

“Wet?” She asked.

Daryl’s lips curled into a half smile and he nodded.

“You do that,” she said. She scratched his skin gently with her fingertips, careful to keep her distance from his dick in case she might set him off. She didn’t want to embarrass him. “What makes you hard? That—feeling? That want? That makes me…so wet. You can feel it?” 

She knew he could. Without question, and perhaps showing that he was growing bolder, Daryl probed her with his finger. 

“Yeah?” He asked.

She bit her lip and nodded at him.

“I ain’t no good,” he said. “Don’t know what the hell I’m doin’.”

“That’s OK,” Carol said. “It’ll be good to me.” 

Daryl laughed to himself.

“You don’t wanna leave ‘cause I told you—I ain’t never?” 

“Do you want me to leave?” Carol asked. Daryl shook his head in response. Carol went to the bed and sat down. For a second, she stayed just sitting. Then, she scooted back, making herself comfortable on the mattress. There was a time for every way of acting, and now was the time for being direct and keeping things easy between them. “Come here,” she said. 

Daryl came to her immediately. He scrambled onto the bed and hung over her. She laughed to herself. 

“You’ve got enough of it,” she said. “I think you’ll be able to figure it out.” She opened her legs to him. His hand immediately went back and rubbed her. She closed her eyes. It had been a while since she’d been touched, but even throughout the whole of her marriage with Ed, she’d never been touched with this much desire.

The desire, she decided, would soothe any of the growing pains they had to overcome together. 

Carol reached her hand out and, touching him, she guided him toward her.

“Come on,” she assured him. “Daryl—whatever you do? It’ll be right. I promise. Just do what feels right to you, and it will feel perfect to me…because you’re perfect to me.” 

“You’re perfect,” Daryl said, his voice heavy with something like awe. 

Daryl covered her mouth with his own. The kiss was perfect, just as she’d anticipated. She felt the pull of his desire in the kiss. She felt the sincerity behind it. 

He was well endowed, and certainly had no reason to be shy. Carol begged a second of adjustment from him by pressing her fingertips against his abdomen and stopping his movements. She knew that to make him wait too long, though, would be to end this before it even began, so she quickly moved her hand and allowed him his freedom to move fully with his urges.

Any discomfort was soon forgotten by the swirling feeling in her gut—almost like gentle whirlwind—that came with her mind realizing she’d been imagining this for some time, and it was true now. And, despite the obviously clumsy movements of a man who was frantic, nearly desperate, and not quite sure of what he was doing, it felt wonderful. Carol had only been with Ed, but he had never wanted to be with her in the same way that she could simply feel that Daryl wanted to be with her, and that made it all the more wonderful than any purely physical act could ever be.

When he came, panting, Carol pulled him against her. She hugged him against her. He seemed hungry for that affection. He sucked at her neck and panted his breath against her shoulder. 

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It was perfect,” she assured him.

“It weren’t,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing…”

“You did it right,” Carol assured him. “There’s not that much to it. And—I can tell by what you left behind, that you did it right.” 

“You didn’t like it.” 

“I loved it,” Carol said.

“You’re just sayin’ that.” 

“You didn’t like it?” 

“Of course I liked it,” Daryl said. He looked almost angry. He pulled away and got up. Carol might have thought he was leaving, but she settled into her spot when she realized he only wanted a cigarette from the table nearby. He came back with a glass to use as an ashtray and sat on the edge of the bed. “I wanted to…it’s stupid,” he said, cutting himself off.

“You wanted to what?” 

“Do that,” Daryl said. “Since—you first moved in.” 

Carol smiled to herself.

“I like that,” she said. “I’ve wanted to do that for a while, too.” 

“But it weren’t good for you ‘cause I didn’t know what the hell I was doin’,” Daryl grumbled.

“It’ll be better,” Carol assured him. “You know more now than you did. And I can teach you. As much as you want to know. So—next time, you’ll know even more.”

Something in Daryl’s demeanor changed. Maybe his shoulders rose a little from the slightly slumped look he’d taken on.

“Next time? You want a next time?” 

“You don’t?” Carol asked.

“I thought—with it not bein’ great an’ all…you might…”

Carol smiled at him. 

“I’m not going to the other bed, Daryl,” she said. “Not unless you ask me to.” 

“I think we both know—I’m not gonna do that.” Daryl said. Carol nodded.

“That’s fine. I’ll stay, then, until you ask me to leave.”

“I may never,” he warned. Carol smiled to herself.

“Then—I guess I’ll just have to stay a while,” she said. “Maybe even forever.”


	20. Chapter 20

AN: Here we are, another chapter here. 

I’ll just remind/warn everyone that throughout this story there will be POV shifts since we’ll be visiting all the couples and their contributions to things.

I hope you enjoy the chapter! Please don’t forget to let me know what you think! 

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The room had probably been a conference room of some kind once upon a time. It reminded Merle of a waiting room. It had those same couches and chairs—the uncomfortable kind that squeaked and creaked and were upholstered with plastic so spilled beverages and body fluids would roll off of them—that waiting rooms always seemed to have.

Merle hadn’t come here for the ambiance, though. He’d come for the quiet and the chance to simply be alone with his thoughts.

Merle had a great many more thoughts, probably, than most people had ever given him credit for. These people, though—his people—gave him a great deal of credit. They gave him more credit, honestly, than he was worth. 

That made it all the more important to him that he figure out what the hell was best for every damn one of them.

Merle jumped when he heard a knocking that interrupted his thoughts.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Scully’s voice was soft like she hated to speak loudly and ruin the contemplative silence of the room with its fake plants and plastic-covered furniture. She walked quietly—carefully, as though keeping her feet from making sounds on the linoleum floor—toward the couch where Merle sat. She gestured to it and he invited her to sit by moving the cigarettes and ashtray that had been resting in the seat. She sat. For a moment, neither of them said anything to the other.

Scully broke the silence.

“Can I have one of those?” She asked.

Merle gave her a cigarette and offered her a light before lighting his own.

“You only smoke when you got somethin’ on your mind, Firecracker,” Merle said. “So how about you just come on out with it?” 

Scully sighed after a long drag off her cigarette. She contemplated her fingers a long moment. Then she looked at Merle’s shoulder—she was avoiding his eyes until she’d processed everything she had to say. Merle’s stomach immediately told him that it wasn’t good news she’d come to share.

“Jenner showed me around,” Scully said.

“Somethin’ outta the ordinary in his labs?” 

“Not the labs,” Scully said. “However—I read some of his logs. The research that’s been taking place here.”

“You ain’t about to tell me he’s found a cure,” Merle said.

Scully’s eyes met his for the first time. She looked disappointed. Crushed. Whatever she’d read was weighing on her, and that was obvious.

“It’s a virus,” Scully said. “It causes the reanimation of the brain stem after death. They come back to life, but it’s not a real life. It’s really only the reactivation of our very basic driving features. They’re essentially programmed to feed. And, in order to feed, they have to kill. Nothing is activated in the regions of the brain that would suggest memory, reasoning, or anything else that makes us essentially human.” 

“We’re dead, but walkin’,” Merle said.

“Exactly,” Scully said. “The walking dead.” 

“But we knew that, Firecracker, so what the hell’s got you lookin’ so damn glum?” 

“I copied the files, Merle, but I didn’t finish reading all of them. I started thinking about a few other things—some mentions made in the logs—and I realized that I needed to talk to you before I even read another page.” 

“Talk to me?” Merle asked. “Not your boyfriend?” 

Scully laughed to herself. 

“I’ll have plenty to discuss with Mulder, later, when I’m reading the rest of those files I tucked in my bag. I needed to talk to you, though, because I think we might need to consider our next move.” 

“Sounds to me like you already got somethin’ figured out. Somethin’ you wanna share with me?” 

“Jenner mentioned something in his logs about the failsafe of the CDC,” Scully said. “He mentioned—it all ending in fire and explosion—one moment of cleansing. That’s what he called it.” 

“Sounds like the ramblings of a fuckin’ lunatic,” Merle said with a laugh.

“It sounds like the government protecting its secrets,” Scully said. “Merle—I believe this place is going to blow up, and maybe soon.” 

“Like it’s rigged?” 

“Like it’s programmed to self-destruct,” Scully said. 

“You know when?”

Scully shook her head.

“All I know is…soon. From what I read, before I came to find you, it lasts as long as the power lasts. Now—without access to the generators, I don’t know if there’s really any way for any of us to know exactly how long that is, but…”

“But better safe than sorry, eh Firecracker?” 

Scully held his eyes and nodded her head gently. She looked a little nauseous and Merle couldn’t blame her. 

“You confident that—you’re readin’ all the signs right?” Merle asked.

“If I’m wrong,” Scully said, “then we leave and we’re back out there on the road. We’re back where we started—trying to figure out where we go from here and what kind of life we can shape for ourselves. We leave this place behind when it could have been our government-provided salvation.” 

“Go on,” Merle urged, swallowing back laughter that was more brought on by nerves than amusement. “I know you ain’t done.”

“One thing we have in common, Merle, is that we don’t trust the government,” Scully said. “If I’m right? And we leave? We escape before we’re blown to pieces in an effort to keep whatever’s here—diseases and secrets—from ever escaping.” 

“I’m not really that much of a gamblin’ man,” Merle said. “I’m willin’ to take a chance on your gut over the government. You rouse the troops. Tell ‘em to pack. If my watch ain’t lost time down here? We can make it out with enough daylight left to have a shot at findin’ some shelter ‘fore the sun goes down.” 

Scully nodded at him and stood up. She started out of the room and turned around to look back at him.

“What were you doing in here, Merle, alone?” She asked.

“Thinkin’,” Merle said. He half expected some kind of quip from her about being surprised that he ever engaged in such an activity or that he was even capable of it. She wasn’t in the mood, though, or maybe she simply didn’t believe such a thing at all.

“You look kind of—bothered,” Scully said. “Is everything OK?” 

Merle laughed to himself.

“Besides the fact we all liable to die if we don’t get our asses outta here? And the fact that—soon as we’re topside of the ground we’re gonna be ass deep in Walkers again? Hunky fuckin’ dory, Sweetcheeks.” She frowned at him. He couldn’t have been more completely scolded by anyone’s words. “That ain’t nothin’ more’n the look of a man who’s—frustrated, Firecracker. Now get the fuck outta here.” 

“Andrea?” Scully asked.

“You a therapist or a doctor?” Merle asked.

“A bit of both, when necessary,” Scully said. “I could talk to her.” 

“Like she’s gonna give a shit what’cha say about me.” 

“You’d be surprised how much weight a woman can put in the words of another woman,” Scully said. “Especially a woman that she considers a friend.”

Merle laughed to himself.

“What the hell would make you vouch for my ass?” He asked.

“Because I believe what I’d be saying,” Scully said. “Would you make me regret that, Merle?” 

Merle stared at her a moment. She stood five foot nothing, but she carried herself like she was eight foot tall and bulletproof. He could feel the challenge in her voice. He could see it in the way she squared her shoulders—like she was prepared to do her best to kick his ass for him if he made a liar out of her.

“No,” Merle said sincerely. “But we all gonna have regrets if you right an’ we don’t get the hell outta here. Come on—let’s go. You rally the troops. Pack everything you absolutely can. If it ain’t nailed down, pack it. I’ma go have a lil’ personal chat with Jenner.” 

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Merle honestly didn’t even need to threaten Jenner.

They’d all shuffled in carrying everything they’d brought with them—and Merle hadn’t missed that Andrea, without being asked by him, had packed and brought his things with her—and quite a bit of other supplies that they’d clearly “claimed” from the CDC. Jenner had confessed that he knew that the place was set to self-destruct at, really, any moment. A clock, which none of them had paid attention to because they’d had no reason to believe it marked anything out of the ordinary or anything important to them, was ticking down to their destruction.

Merle didn’t have to threaten Jenner because, as soon as Jenner said what he had to say, Carol had let out an animalistic cry—the sincerest sounds of anguish always seemed to come from mothers, of any species, that mourned for their young—and lamented that her daughter, a baby to her in that moment as she clutched her to her breast, might die in such a horrible way. She repeated the sound, this time with even more anguish before, when Jenner suggested that he wouldn’t unlock the place—he wouldn’t let them out—because the death he offered them was better than the death they’d surely find outside.

Something in that sound of suffering bubbling out of his chosen mate—because Merle wasn’t foolish enough to believe that nothing had happened between them when he could already see something of a change in his brother’s overall demeanor—had stirred up a primal response in Daryl.

He would, without hesitation, tear Jenner’s throat out with his fingers—and he would enjoy it.

And Merle was pretty sure, when Daryl had him pinned, that Jenner understood that. There was enough pressure on his windpipe to let him know that Daryl wasn’t playing, but Daryl also knew how to keep from choking him out.

“Let us the fuck outta here,” Daryl growled, his face right in front of Jenner’s. 

“If you kill me,” Jenner said with the little bit of air that Daryl was allowing him, “then you’ll never get out.”

“If you don’t let us outta here? I’ll break your fuckin’ neck,” Daryl said. He was speaking through clenched teeth, but nobody in the room likely doubted his sincerity—least of all Jenner. “And then we’ll spend the rest of the damn time we got left figurin’ out how to open the damned door.”

“Either way, I die here,” Jenner said.

“Sooner rather than later, the way you headin’,” Daryl said.

“How long do you think you last out there? How far do you think you get?” Jenner asked. “You don’t survive this. Nobody survives this. It’s the end-event. The world will be wiped clean of human life. This virus ends everything.”

Merle didn’t have to threaten Jenner because, when it became clear that Jenner thought he had the solution to everything, Mulder stepped in to try to offer a bit of cool-headed reasoning—explaining to Jenner that they all had the right to choose how they wanted to live and die, if such a choice was offered to them, and that they deserved the right to try to live as surely as Jenner deserved the right to decide that he would never go with them and would, instead, stay there and wait for his fiery death. And then, when Mulder’s even-keeled explanation of why Jenner ought to open the door didn’t work, Merle didn’t have to threaten Jenner because every bit of frustration with the whole damn world that Mulder had swallowed back in the last little while came out when he landed a solid punch on the man’s face.

Merle thought that, later, he’d congratulate Mulder on his form. He had managed to land a solid punch that didn’t incapacitate Jenner, and also didn’t break Mulder’s hand, but it surely got his point across.

Merle didn’t have to threaten Jenner because Jacqui still had an axe among her things, and she had dubbed herself the final word on the whole situation. 

Scully, Andrea, and Carol had all moved to block her—to stop her from chopping the man from asshole to appetite—but everyone else seemed content to let it happen if that was what needed to happen.

And even though Jenner might be a man that wanted to die, he didn’t want to die by being cleaved in two by a pissed off woman who, like the rest of them, might have gone just a touch feral in the passing days. 

Suddenly, Jenner understand the argument that everyone should have the right to choose—if such a choice were offered to them—how exactly they wanted to die. He could open the doors that separated the lower and upper floors of the building—doors that locked tight in a place where maximum security was a case of life or death. He would open those.

But he claimed that he had no power to open the upper doors that led to the outside. 

“They’re sealed by the computer,” he said. “I can’t override it. I don’t have the codes or that level of access. It was done that way to prevent anyone from being able to get in when the building would have been completely abandoned and the power would have been on the verge of failure.”

“More than likely it was to keep anything in here from getting out,” Mulder said.

There wasn’t time to argue, though. Where there was a will, there was a fucking way. The clock, now that they understood it was essentially their personal doomsday clock, didn’t leave them with a great window of time. Jenner had fully expected to keep them there—fed and happy—until a little later when they would have been obliterated without even knowing it was coming.

On the upper level, it quickly became evident that they weren’t going to bust the windows out by any normal means. They tried throwing themselves at them. They tried hitting them with the lobby chairs. They tried the axes and other weapons they had in their possession.

“Wait!” Carol called out, moving her arm from where she was holding Sophia against her in a hug. “I have something…I think I can help!” 

“It’s gonna have to be a helluva thing you got, Mouse,” Merle said, panting from his exertions to help Daryl, Mulder, Glenn, and T-Dog break down the door. “Because this shit ain’t so much as scratched this fuckin’ industrial strength shit…”

Carol held out her hand as she pulled it from her bag and, in her palm, was a grenade.

“I kept them on me from some of the supplies we found,” Carol said. Her hand shook as she held the grenade out to Merle. “Just in case.” 

Merle laughed to himself as he took the item.

“So…Mouse is a woman that keeps fuckin’ grenades in case she’s gotta—you know—blow some shit up,” Merle mused. “We gonna talk about this shit again, but right now? This is the best fuckin’ thing I’ve seen in a while. Everybody hit the ground. Cover your ears.”

“You think it’ll work?” Carol asked, already covering her daughter’s body with her own on the floor.

“We about to find out,” Merle said. 

He was the one that pulled the pin and rolled the grenade close to the window they needed to remove. He got away as quickly as he could and covered his head and ears as best as he could.

The explosion was still deafening. There was no way around that. They’d all suffer at least minor hearing loss from it, and they could only hope it wasn’t permanent. At least, though, they’d be alive—because the grenade took out the window.

“Go!” Daryl yelled as he stood up to see the opening. “Go! Go on! Go for the vehicles!” 

There was no need to tell anyone twice. They all spilled out the window. Daryl handed Sophia down to Carol and followed after her, hot on her heels. Merle hung back to make sure that everyone got out—even Dale, who was slower moving than the rest of them—and then he made a run for his own vehicle. They’d decide where to go, but for right now “away” was all they were aiming for.

The caravan followed Merle away from the CDC as surely as they’d followed him to the building. His stomach clenched when, some little while later, in the rearview mirror, he saw the Atlanta skyline and the unmistakable black cloud that told him that, just as they’d likely chosen their way to die, Jenner had chosen his.

Merle kept going, and they kept following him. 

Unlike Jenner, they still had a chance, they just had to make the best of it.


	21. Chapter 21

AN: Here we are, another chapter here. 

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

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Daryl pulled up beside Merle and killed the engine. One by one, the other vehicles pulled into the field and killed their engines. People spilled out of the vehicles and, stretching their muscles, all walked toward Merle, gathering together in a bunch. 

“It’s gettin’ late,” Merle said. “Don’t want dark to catch our asses. I been followin’ that creek a while. Looks like we could lose track of it soon. Figure this barn is as good as any other. If I’da known the house was gonna be half burnt like that, I’da stopped a house back, but…”

“We can sleep in a barn as good as a house,” Daryl said quickly.

The truth of the matter was that they’d probably all prefer beds, couches, or comfortable pallets on carpeted or rug-covered floors to sleeping in the dirt in their sleeping bags, but Daryl was making it clear that they weren’t going to complain. They’d let Merle lead the way. They’d expected him to find the perfect place. They couldn’t very well bitch because he hadn’t found them Buckingham Palace for the night.

Merle gave Daryl a look. Daryl thought, maybe, he could read some appreciation there.

“What do you want us to do, Merle?” Carol asked.

Merle smiled at her—just barely. It was clear he was trying to hold it back a little.

“You know the drill better’n anyone, Mouse,” Merle said. “Gotta make camp. You say the place, and we’ll build you a fire to cook on out here. If that’s a dirt floor in that barn, we might can make us a ring and build a low ash fire in there to keep warm for the night.” 

“I’ll check it out,” Carol said. “We can sweep it clean, if it is.”

“Wouldn’t expect no different,” Merle said. “You got the camp under control, Mouse. Put people where you want ‘em. Me an’ Daryl’s gonna walk just around the woods around here. See if we can’t scare up somethin’ to put on a fire for supper.” 

With people left behind to clean the barn—including taking care of any trapped Walkers—and to gather wood and water, set up the camp, and protect it until they returned, Daryl followed after his brother, without hesitation, as soon as he’d plucked his crossbow from the truck and divvied up the rest of the supplies that Merle pulled from the back of the truck for them to take on the short hunt.

They put some distance between themselves and the camp, knowing quite well that game would have automatically started to move away the minute that many vehicles veered off the road and headed for the field in front of the barn. 

They ran into no more than a handful of Walkers, each of them taking turns with their knives dropping the dead things to the ground. 

The deer crossing their paths the way it did was just a stroke of pure luck. They were even luckier that Merle dropped it as easily as he did. He hit it pretty solidly and it only made them run about twenty feet before it dropped dead. Merle immediately pulled his clean knife—the one he always carried hunting and never used on a Walker unless there was absolutely no way around it—and began to field dress the deer immediately.

“That lil’ woman yours now? You lay claim to her?” Merle asked, breaking the silence they’d guarded since the camp except, of course, for the few necessary words that had communicated who would take what Walker as it stumbled across their path.

There were no obvious Walkers around them now, but Daryl circled around, still, making sure that nothing surprised them while Merle worked.

“I reckon,” Daryl said. 

Merle laughed to himself.

“You already a good deal calmer, boy,” Merle said. “Musta been damn good. That pussy settled your ass in a fuckin’ instant. Like throwin’ some damn pussy-shaped Xanax at your ass. Got you struttin’. You couldn’t hide that shit if you wanted.”

“Stop talkin’ about her pussy, Merle,” Daryl warned, feeling the hair on his arms and the back of his neck bristle.

Merle laughed again.

“Alright—OK, lil’ brother. I get it. You don’t want nobody so much as thinkin’ about what’s yours—and you done claimed it, all right. Uh huh. You always was that way. Didn’t never share worth a damn. What’s yours was yours an’ you ain’t wanted nobody in spittin’ distance of your shit.” 

“Merle…” Daryl warned.

“Don’t be like that,” Merle said. “I been waitin’ on you to bust your damn cherry since you was growin’ your first short an’ curlies, brother. I just wanna know—was it good to ya? Hmmm? She a sweet lil’ piece?”

Daryl frowned at his brother, but Merle was unmoved. He just smiled expectantly at Daryl. Daryl sighed. 

“It’s good, OK? She’s good.” 

“Sweet?” Merle asked.

“She’s sweet,” Daryl said.

“You get you a lil’ taste of it? Let that shit just—melt in your damn mouth, brother?” 

“You pushin’ it, Merle,” Daryl warned. Merle thought that shit was hilarious. 

“Come on, Darylina,” Merle said. “I just wanna know—did you do her all right? Make her cry out your damn name and we just ain’t heard her?” Merle looked up from his messy work when Daryl didn’t speak immediately. “Uh-oh…oh no…I know that look. What happened? You nut too fast? That shit don’t happen too often, brother. Not once you get used to that sweet, sweet piece. Or she cut you off after that?” 

“Damn CDC blew up,” Daryl said. “She ain’t cut me off. We had plans. Went twice but…”

“Both times, brother? Well—hell, don’t feel so damn sorry for it. I mean—it’s…shit’s sensitive. Sometimes. She weren’t pissed?” 

Daryl shook his head. 

“You at least—eat her out?” 

“Merle…” Daryl said.

“I’m sayin’ you can do her good even if you the one-second-wonder for a while, brother.”

“Tried to,” Daryl said. “She said—I didn’t have to. Wouldn’t let me. Said she was sleepy.” 

Merle furrowed his brow at him.

“You got a look at it? There weren’t nothin’ wrong with it?” 

Daryl shrugged and shook his head. 

“Not for all the damn knowledge I got of such things, Merle,” he said, not bothering to swallow back his annoyance at his brother’s persistence. Merle was like a dog with a bone, though, and there were few topics in life that he loved to pontificate on more than pussy. “She just said—somethin’ about she ain’t shaved and…I didn’t have to…and then she was sleepy. Wanted to…you know…snuggle.” 

The smile returned to Merle’s face. 

“Did you snuggle your sweet lil’ thing, Darylina?” Merle asked, heaping a little too much saccharine sweetness into his tone.

“Shut up,” Daryl said. 

Merle laughed to himself. He got up and mopped at his fingers with one of the rags he carried in his back pocket. 

“Some women are insecure about their pussies,” Merle said. “See, brother, there’s some men that don’t understand a good pussy. Don’t respect it like they ought to. Go around fuckin’ women up an’ makin’ ‘em uncomfortable about their pussies. Get ‘em thinkin’—you know—a pussy oughta be all bald an’ shit, but it says right there in the name, brother…it says pussy. Now anybody knows if you got you a pussy of the feline or the female variety, you wanna stroke it. Rub it. Hell—you wanna rub your damn face against it. Feel how damn soft it is—because there ain’t nothin’ feels quite like a pussy, Daryl. And it helps if it’s got a lil’ fur to make it soft.” Merle winked at Daryl. “They make them bald ass ones, but they scary, both in the feline and the female varieties. A bald ass pussy is too damn reminiscent of a pussy that ain’t come of age yet. Ain’t fit to be stroked. But some men—they don’t know a good thing. Hell—some of them assholes even get to thinkin’ pussies oughta not smell like pussies. Oughta not taste like pussies. Like they got some kinda idea what they want, but it ain’t no pussy. Now your lil’ Mouse? That ole man of hers was a son-of-a-bitch. Chances are, brother, she just…needs your ass to show her how the hell you respect a fine ass piece of pussy.” 

“You’re a damn poet, you know that, Merle?” Daryl said, rolling his eyes.

Merle laughed.

“You got you one, now,” he said. “You talk her into lettin’ you have it as much as you want? You’ll write a lil’ diddy or two about that shit. Don’t you fret over it, Darylina. If she let you stay to snuggle, she’s gonna let you back between them legs. And when she does? I expect you gonna make your big brother proud.”

Daryl offered to carry the deer, but finally helped Merle heave the thing up and over his shoulders. He didn’t mind being nasty, thankfully, and he said this way he wouldn’t have to fight too hard to get the first bath—and early. They’d practically be shoving him toward the hot water to keep the flies and everything else from swarming the camp to get at him.

“It don’t matter no way,” Daryl said, when they’d started back toward the camp.

“Maybe it don’t matter to your ass,” Merle said, “but bein’ caked in blood’s gotta be like puttin’ some kinda damn Walker target on my ass. I don’t wanna sleep with somethin’ like a damn dinner bell hangin’ over my head.”

“I weren’t talkin’ about that, Merle,” Daryl said.

“The hell were you talkin’ about, then?” Merle asked.

“Pussy.”

Merle looked far too pleased, all of a sudden.

“A man after my own heart,” he said. “But don’t’cha ever let me hear you say that pussy don’t matter. That kinda shit is liable to do my ass in. Give me one of them massive heart attacks. Not even Firecracker could save my ass from somethin’ like that.” 

“I mean the CDC’s gone, Merle. We’re back to livin’ in tents. Not even that. We’re crammin’ our asses into a barn together. There ain’t a damn bit of privacy.” 

Merle hummed at him.

“So,” he said, drawing it out. “That’s what’s got your ass so surly. You just got you one, and now you thinkin’ it’s been took away from you.”

“You pretendin’ this don’t change shit?” 

“You nuzzle that lil’ woman’s ear real good for her, Daryl, when we get back to camp,” Merle said. “Whisper her some pretty sweet nothin’s. Tell her just what the hell I told you about—that pussy of hers bein’ just right. Just like you want it to be. Tell her you got yourself all set to nuzzle up to it if she’d just give you the chance to get you a lil’ lovin’. Tell her you got your mouth all ready for it—waterin’ and all. Walls or no walls, Daryl—she’s bound to let you use her thighs to keep your ears warm at night, just as long as you bein’ sweet like she likes you to be—an’ you snugglin’ afterwards, of course.” 

Merle winked at Daryl and laughed quietly to himself.

Daryl’s stomach fluttered at the thought. He wanted more with Carol. He wanted more of everything with her. He wanted more time to kiss her—more opportunity. He wanted more chances to explore her body. He wanted to lick her and bite her—but only in the best ways, and only as much as she said he could, and just enough to feel what her skin felt like beneath his tongue and between his teeth—he’d barely begun anything like that in the time they’d had. He wanted to remind himself of what the skin of her nipples felt like against his tongue, and he wanted—well, he might not want to write poetry about pussy in quite the way that Merle did, but he did want a chance to try everything he’d ever heard about from Merle, and everything he’d ever imagined. 

“We gotta find somethin’ better than a barn, Merle,” Daryl said. “I weren’t gonna say that with everybody listening, but we gotta do better than a barn.” 

Merle laughed to himself.

“You think I don’t know that shit? This barn is to get our asses through tonight, Daryl. This ain’t gonna suit nobody. Firecracker and Mulder are fuckin’ like rabbits and that ain’t no good for sleepin’. I don’t doubt they ain’t the only sleepin’ bags rustlin’ around tonight, neither. It won’t do none of us no good to be piled up on top of each other in that tiny ass barn no longer than we gotta be. The barn’ll keep the cold off tonight, but that shit ain’t home. Tomorrow, we leave at the first light.”

“Where we goin’?” 

“Not too damn far from where we at,” Merle said. “I’d like to put a few more miles between us and Atlanta. Walkers are thin here. I’m hopin’ they thinner even further from the big ass population we left behind us. We’ll go down the highway a piece. Find a farm off the main roads—one of them big ass numbers. Guaranteed to have a well, fences, a house with plenty enough rooms. It’ll get us through the winter. We can build in the spring. Individual ass spaces for everybody that needs ‘em. Hunt down whatever livestock’s gone roamin’ wild around here. Re-domesticate it. Plant what the hell we can find seed for.” 

“You been thinkin’ about this a lot,” Daryl said. 

Merle grinned at him.

“Had a lotta time at the CDC to just lie my ass awake an’ make a plan while Andrea slept an’ ignored my ass,” Merle said. “I ain’t had no pussy to keep my mind offa things. Now that I got the plan, though, I’m hopin’ the pussy just sorts itself out.” 

Merle winked at Daryl, gave him a shit-eating grin, and double timed his steps as soon as camp came into view and he could see T-Dog and Mulder carrying loads of sticks they’d rounded up for fires. Daryl let Merle get ahead a few steps—to give him the full glory of bringing the deer that, honestly, was his deer, anyway, into camp—and then he rushed on ahead to catch up with him.


End file.
